The Power of the Crowd: How the Public Can Both Spoil and Improve Social Media as a Source of Information (Elements in Experimental Political Science)

By: Jason Reifler and Florian Stöckel and Sabrina Stöckli and Benjamin A. Lyons and Hannah Kroker

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Synopsis: This Element explores misinformation as a challenge for democracies, using experiments from Germany, Italy, and the UK to assess the role of user-generated corrections on social media. A sample of more than 170,000 observations across a wide range of topics (COVID, climate change, 5G etc.) is used to test whether social corrections help reduce the perceived accuracy of false news and whether miscorrections decrease the credibility of true news. Corrections reduce the perceived accuracy of misinformation, but miscorrections can harm perceptions of true news. The Element also assesses the mechanisms of social corrections, finding evidence for recency effects rather than systematic processing. Additional analyses show the characteristics of individuals who have more difficulties identifying false news. Survey data is included on characteristics of people who write comments often. The conclusion highlights that social corrections can mislead, but also work as remedy. The Element ends with best practices for effective corrections.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:: 9781009677141
Related ISBNs:: 9781009677172, 9781009677172
Publisher:: Cambridge University Press
Date of Addition:: 10/20/25
Copyrighted By:: Florian Stöckel, Sabrina Stöckli, Benjamin A. Lyons, Hannah Kroker and Jason Reifler
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: History, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Politics and Government
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.