Who Is Susceptible to Online Health Misinformation?

Guess et al recently reported that a brief digital media literacy intervention improved detection of fake news headlines in both the United States and India 2 Another perspective is that people tend to be susceptible to misinformation that is consistent with their preexisting beliefs or worldview 3 Considerable research has shown that people tend to preferentially believe information that is consistent with their other preexisting beliefs 3 However, recent research has found that people may not be as influenced by their preexisting attitudes as previously thought a recent study showed that a simple accuracy nudge that primes people to think about whether headlines are true is sufficient to increase the quality of COVID-19-related news content that people indicate they would share on social media 5 A Twitter field experiment employing a similar intervention has also reported promising results 7 These findings support the idea that people fall for misinformation because they fail to think about the accuracy of content that they come across on social media, not because they are exercising politically motivated reasoning or are simply confused about what is and is not true To summarize, there are three currently dominant (albeit not entirely mutually exclusive) theoretical perspectives addressing why certain people are susceptible to online misinformation: (1) being confused about what is true versus false, suggesting that knowledge or various literacies are a primary factor;(2) having strong preexisting beliefs or ideological motivations that lead to motivated reasoning and therefore a desire to believe and share misinformation;and (3) neglecting to sufficiently reflect about the truth or accuracy of news content that is encountered on social media