A cross-national examination of the effects of accuracy nudges and content veracity labels on belief in and sharing of misleading news

This study examined whether accuracy nudges and content veracity labels enhance people’s discernment in believing and sharing true versus false news. Participants in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Hong Kong were shown five true and five false social media posts in random order. Two true posts and two false posts were randomly assigned “True” and “False” labels, respectively. Multilevel regression models indicated that accuracy nudges and veracity labels had no direct effects on the perceived accuracy of posts or willingness to share them, though the interaction of the “False” label and accuracy nudge significantly reduced the perceived accuracy of and intention to share false news across the samples. Post hoc analyses further uncovered contingent effects based on individual differences, including partisan identity in the United States and conspiratorial thinking in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. The findings demonstrate the efficacy of combined countermeasures in attenuating the effects of misinformation.The belief in and spread of misinformation (i.e., “fake news”) through social media is a global problem that can have negative and even deadly consequences in society. Facing this problem, different public actors such as governments, social media platforms, and scholars have proposed different countermeasures to reduce people’s belief in and sharing of misinformation. This study examined the effectiveness of accuracy nudges and content veracity labels. The former is a simple reminder for individuals to think about accuracy before exposure to possible misinformation. The other is an explicit label that informs the individual whether a social media post is true or misleading. An experiment was conducted in three societies that are considered to be polarized: the United States, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong. Respondents were exposed to a combination of true and misleading social media posts and were asked to rate their accuracy and willingness to share them. The results showed that the countermeasures worked well under certain conditions to reduce the belief in and sharing of misleading news.