Creating News Literacy Messages to Enhance Expert Corrections of Misinformation on Twitter

A number of solutions have been proposed to address concerns about misinformation online, including encouraging experts to engage in corrections of misinformation being shared and improving media literacy among the American public. This study combines these approaches to examine whether news literacy (NL) messages on social media enhance the effectiveness of expert correction of misinformation on Twitter. Two experiments suggest that expert organizations can successfully correct misinformation on social media across two controversial issues with a single tweet. However, three different NL messages did not improve the effectiveness of expert corrections. We discuss the difficulties of crafting NL messages that break through the clutter on social media and suggest guidelines for organizations attempting to address misinformation online.

Automated summary

This study examines the effectiveness of using news literacy messages on social media to enhance expert correction of misinformation on Twitter. Two experiments show that expert organizations can successfully correct misinformation on social media with a single tweet, but different news literacy messages do not improve the effectiveness of the corrections.