Stopping the spread of misinformation on Facebook is a difficult proposition. One of the reasons it is so difficult, particularly in the United States, is high levels of political polarization. Center for Media Engagement research shows that Democrats and Republicans are susceptible to believing misinformation about candidates from the opposing party and that Democrats and Republicans respond differently to fact checks.
Our results offer some strategies for employing fact checks effectively. First, utilizing strong language is important. We found that an early Facebook attempt to label misinformation as “disputed” is ineffective compared to the stronger label of “false,” which reduced misperceptions among Democrats. Second, our analysis demonstrated that providing context about the fact-checker can help to increase the effectiveness of a fact check. A random set of study participants were shown fact checks accompanied only by the name of the fact-checking source. Another random set of participants were shown the name of the fact-checking source and the source’s tag line, such as PolitiFact’s “Sorting out the truth in politics.” Fact checks accompanied by a tagline were more effective at correcting misperceptions for Republicans than fact checks without a tagline.