![]() ![]() ![]() They think, ‘There's stuff that Twitter is not showing me. But if the person is sophisticated, censorship has the opposite effect. If you actually prevent them from seeing misinformation, they eventually learn. ![]() “If the person using Twitter is not sophisticated, this helps. This is an effective remedy for naive people, but the researchers found that it has an unintended effect on sophisticated people. Performance targets - trying to limit the amount of misinformation on individual social media platforms.Ĭensorship, for example, is a common strategy - such as when Twitter hides a tweet that it deems untrue.Accuracy nudging - encouraging the audience to question information.Content diversification - showing the audience alternative viewpoints.Censorship - hiding the misinformation from the audience.In this paper, they conclude that the effectiveness of a particular strategy can depend on the sophistication of the individual or the audience it’s applied to. In a follow-up paper, Mostagir and Siderius study strategies that have been suggested to fight misinformation. “Everyone agrees that there is misinformation, but naive people don't really care about this because they just integrate everything into their beliefs.” Yet sophisticated people tend to blame misinformation when their beliefs are challenged - leading them to doubt even things that are true, he said. “Basically, it's not only the misinformation itself, but the knowledge that there is misinformation, that breaks down the learning process,” Mostagir explained in a recent interview. This, paradoxically, can sometimes work in their favor. Sophisticated people react more strongly to the mere presence of misinformation and are more likely to question reality, whereas naive people are more likely to simply believe what they hear. However, when faced with misinformation, the research found that sophisticated people can be less likely to learn what’s true. The researchers note that people who are classified as sophisticated (for example, through the Cognitive Reflection Test) are generally better at discerning truth than naive people. ![]() In a paper forthcoming in the journal Management Science, Mostagir and coauthor James Siderius of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology describe a mathematical model that helps explain the power of misinformation. For example, censoring news that might contain misinformation can actually backfire and make sophisticated people less likely to believe the truth, the researchers found. Efforts to combat misinformation should therefore tailor their strategies to different audiences, according to a pair of papers co-authored by Ross School of Business Professor Mohamed Mostagir. ![]()
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