European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Rue du Champ de Mars 21, 1050, Brussels, Belgium.
European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Seville, Spain.
Sci Rep. 2024 Sep 5;14(1):20723. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-71599-6.
Misinformation surrounding crises poses a significant challenge for public institutions. Understanding the relative effectiveness of different types of interventions to counter misinformation, and which segments of the population are most and least receptive to them, is crucial. We conducted a preregistered online experiment involving 5228 participants from Germany, Greece, Ireland, and Poland. Participants were exposed to misinformation on climate change or COVID-19. In addition, they were pre-emptively exposed to a prebunk, warning them of commonly used misleading strategies, before encountering the misinformation, or were exposed to a debunking intervention afterwards. The source of the intervention (i.e. the European Commission) was either revealed or not. The findings show that both interventions change four variables reflecting vulnerability to misinformation in the expected direction in almost all cases, with debunks being slightly more effective than prebunks. Revealing the source of the interventions did not significantly impact their overall effectiveness. One case of undesirable effect heterogeneity was observed: debunks with revealed sources were less effective in decreasing the credibility of misinformation for people with low levels of trust in the European Union (as elicited in a post-experimental questionnaire). While our results mostly suggest that the European Commission, and possibly other public institutions, can confidently debunk and prebunk misinformation regardless of the trust level of the recipients, further evidence on this is needed.
围绕危机的错误信息给公共机构带来了重大挑战。了解不同类型的干预措施在对抗错误信息方面的相对有效性,以及哪些人群最容易接受、哪些人群最不容易接受这些干预措施,是至关重要的。我们进行了一项预先注册的在线实验,涉及来自德国、希腊、爱尔兰和波兰的 5228 名参与者。参与者接触到有关气候变化或 COVID-19 的错误信息。此外,在遇到错误信息之前,他们会预先接触到预先警告,提醒他们常见的误导性策略,或者在之后接触到揭穿干预。干预措施的来源(即欧盟委员会)要么被揭示,要么不被揭示。研究结果表明,在几乎所有情况下,这两种干预措施都以预期的方向改变了反映对错误信息易感性的四个变量,揭穿干预措施比预先警告措施略有效。揭示干预措施的来源并没有显著影响它们的整体效果。观察到一个不良效果异质性的案例:对于那些对欧盟信任度较低的人(如在实验后的问卷调查中所反映的),有来源的揭穿干预措施在降低错误信息的可信度方面效果较差。虽然我们的结果大多表明,欧盟委员会(可能还有其他公共机构)可以自信地揭穿和预先警告错误信息,而不论接收者的信任程度如何,但还需要更多这方面的证据。