Department of Communication, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA.
The Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
Health Commun. 2021 Nov;36(13):1687-1696. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2020.1787933. Epub 2020 Jul 7.
This study uses an unobtrusive eye tracking approach to examine understudied psychological mechanisms - message attention and credibility - when people are exposed to misinformation and correction on social media. We contrast humor versus non-humor correction strategies that point out rhetorical flaws in misinformation regarding the HPV vaccine, which was selected for its relevance and impact on public health. We randomly assigned participants to one of two experimental conditions: humor correction versus non-humor correction. Our analyses revealed that the humor correction increased attention to the image portion of the correction tweet, and this attention indirectly lowered HPV misperceptions by reducing the credibility of the misinformation tweet. The study also found that the non-humor correction outperformed the humor correction in reducing misperceptions via its higher credibility ratings. Practical implications for correcting misinformation on social media are discussed.
本研究采用一种非侵入性的眼动追踪方法，考察了人们在社交媒体上接触错误信息和纠正信息时，一些鲜少被研究的心理机制——信息关注和可信度。我们对比了幽默和非幽默纠错策略，这些策略指出了有关 HPV 疫苗错误信息中的修辞缺陷，选择 HPV 疫苗是因为它与公共卫生的相关性和影响。我们将参与者随机分配到两种实验条件之一：幽默纠错与非幽默纠错。我们的分析表明，幽默纠错增加了对纠错推文图像部分的关注，这种关注通过降低错误信息推文的可信度，间接地降低了 HPV 的错误认知。该研究还发现，非幽默纠错通过更高的可信度评分，在降低错误认知方面优于幽默纠错。文中还讨论了社交媒体上纠正错误信息的实际意义。
