TY - GEN
T1 - Are We Correcting Fake News Effectively? The Role of Information Asymmetry on the Effectiveness of False and Correction Posts
AU - King, Kelvin
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 30th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2024. All rights reserved.
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - While academics, government agencies, and industry practitioners have often proposed and relied on correction messages to reduce the spread of misinformation, recent studies indicate they have been ineffective, often amplifying the false message. The current research identifies the major factors responsible for the in/effectiveness of corrections as they interact with fake news on social media using a unique dataset obtained during two shock events. Our study revealed content- and linguistic-related features responsible for this phenomenon. We find that, for example, the more facts posted in a tweet, the less effective the correction tweet is. However, the more words and the more similar a tweet is to an original falsehood, the more effective it is, suggesting information asymmetry influences misinformation diffusion. Furthermore, we find that the probability of being effective was higher for positively charged correction tweets than negatively charged correction posts. These findings have several implications for research and practice.
AB - While academics, government agencies, and industry practitioners have often proposed and relied on correction messages to reduce the spread of misinformation, recent studies indicate they have been ineffective, often amplifying the false message. The current research identifies the major factors responsible for the in/effectiveness of corrections as they interact with fake news on social media using a unique dataset obtained during two shock events. Our study revealed content- and linguistic-related features responsible for this phenomenon. We find that, for example, the more facts posted in a tweet, the less effective the correction tweet is. However, the more words and the more similar a tweet is to an original falsehood, the more effective it is, suggesting information asymmetry influences misinformation diffusion. Furthermore, we find that the probability of being effective was higher for positively charged correction tweets than negatively charged correction posts. These findings have several implications for research and practice.
KW - Corrections
KW - Fake News
KW - Information Asymmetry
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85213016349&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85213016349&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85213016349
T3 - 30th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2024
BT - 30th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2024
PB - Association for Information Systems
T2 - 30th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2024
Y2 - 15 August 2024 through 17 August 2024
ER -