Political Fact-Checking on Twitter: When Do Corrections Have an Effect?

Research suggests that fact checking corrections have only a limited impact on the spread of false rumors. However, research has not considered that fact-checking may be socially contingent, meaning there are social contexts in which truth may be more or less preferred. In particular, we argue that...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Political communication 2018-04, Vol.35 (2), p.196-219
Main Authors: Margolin, Drew B., Hannak, Aniko, Weber, Ingmar
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accountability
Connectedness
fact-checking
Information dissemination
Misinformation
rumor
Rumors
Social environment
Social meaning
Social networks
Social structure
Strangers
Truth
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Summary:Research suggests that fact checking corrections have only a limited impact on the spread of false rumors. However, research has not considered that fact-checking may be socially contingent, meaning there are social contexts in which truth may be more or less preferred. In particular, we argue that strong social connections between fact-checkers and rumor spreaders encourage the latter to prefer sharing accurate information, making them more likely to accept corrections. We test this argument on real corrections made on Twitter between Janurary 2012 and April, 2014. As hypothesized, we find that individuals who follow and are followed by the people who correct them are significantly more likely to accept the correction than individuals confronted by strangers. We then replicate our findings on new data drawn from November 2015 to February, 2016. These findings suggest that the underlying social structure is an important factor in the correction of misinformation.
ISSN:1058-4609
1091-7675
DOI:10.1080/10584609.2017.1334018