Fighting misinformation on social media using crowdsourced judgments of news source quality
Abstract
Many people consume news via social media. It is therefore desirable to reduce social media users’ exposure to low-quality news content. One possible intervention is for social media ranking algorithms to show relatively less content from sources that users deem to be untrustworthy. But are laypeople’s judgments reliable indicators of quality, or are they corrupted by either partisan bias or lack of information? Perhaps surprisingly, we find that laypeople—on average—are quite good at distinguishing between lower- and higher-quality sources. These results indicate that incorporating the trust ratings of laypeople into social media ranking algorithms may prove an effective intervention against misinformation, fake news, and news content with heavy political bias.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Jan 28, 2019
- Source ID
- 10.1073/pnas.1806781116
Entities
People
- David G. Rand
- Gordon Pennycook
Organizations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Miami Foundation
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
- Templeton World Charity Foundation
- University of Regina