A Practical Guide to Doing Behavioral Research on Fake News and Misinformation
<jats:p>Coincident with the global rise in concern about the spread of misinformation on social media, there has been influx of behavioral research on so-called “fake news” (fabricated or false news headlines that are presented as if legitimate) and other forms of misinformation. These studies...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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University of California Press
2022
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144265 |
| _version_ | 1826189033289547776 |
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| author | Pennycook, Gordon Binnendyk, Jabin Newton, Christie Rand, David G |
| author2 | Sloan School of Management |
| author_facet | Sloan School of Management Pennycook, Gordon Binnendyk, Jabin Newton, Christie Rand, David G |
| author_sort | Pennycook, Gordon |
| collection | MIT |
| description | <jats:p>Coincident with the global rise in concern about the spread of misinformation on social media, there has been influx of behavioral research on so-called “fake news” (fabricated or false news headlines that are presented as if legitimate) and other forms of misinformation. These studies often present participants with news content that varies on relevant dimensions (e.g., true v. false, politically consistent v. inconsistent, etc.) and ask participants to make judgments (e.g., accuracy) or choices (e.g., whether they would share it on social media). This guide is intended to help researchers navigate the unique challenges that come with this type of research. Principle among these issues is that the nature of news content that is being spread on social media (whether it is false, misleading, or true) is a moving target that reflects current affairs in the context of interest. Steps are required if one wishes to present stimuli that allow generalization from the study to the real-world phenomenon of online misinformation. Furthermore, the selection of content to include can be highly consequential for the study’s outcome, and researcher biases can easily result in biases in a stimulus set. As such, we advocate for pretesting materials and, to this end, report our own pretest of 224 recent true and false news headlines, both relating to U.S. political issues and the COVID-19 pandemic. These headlines may be of use in the short term, but, more importantly, the pretest is intended to serve as an example of best practices in a quickly evolving area of research.</jats:p> |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T08:08:48Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/144265 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T08:08:48Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publisher | University of California Press |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1442652023-03-29T19:47:04Z A Practical Guide to Doing Behavioral Research on Fake News and Misinformation Pennycook, Gordon Binnendyk, Jabin Newton, Christie Rand, David G Sloan School of Management Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences <jats:p>Coincident with the global rise in concern about the spread of misinformation on social media, there has been influx of behavioral research on so-called “fake news” (fabricated or false news headlines that are presented as if legitimate) and other forms of misinformation. These studies often present participants with news content that varies on relevant dimensions (e.g., true v. false, politically consistent v. inconsistent, etc.) and ask participants to make judgments (e.g., accuracy) or choices (e.g., whether they would share it on social media). This guide is intended to help researchers navigate the unique challenges that come with this type of research. Principle among these issues is that the nature of news content that is being spread on social media (whether it is false, misleading, or true) is a moving target that reflects current affairs in the context of interest. Steps are required if one wishes to present stimuli that allow generalization from the study to the real-world phenomenon of online misinformation. Furthermore, the selection of content to include can be highly consequential for the study’s outcome, and researcher biases can easily result in biases in a stimulus set. As such, we advocate for pretesting materials and, to this end, report our own pretest of 224 recent true and false news headlines, both relating to U.S. political issues and the COVID-19 pandemic. These headlines may be of use in the short term, but, more importantly, the pretest is intended to serve as an example of best practices in a quickly evolving area of research.</jats:p> 2022-08-08T15:15:26Z 2022-08-08T15:15:26Z 2021 2022-08-08T15:11:26Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144265 Pennycook, Gordon, Binnendyk, Jabin, Newton, Christie and Rand, David G. 2021. "A Practical Guide to Doing Behavioral Research on Fake News and Misinformation." Collabra: Psychology, 7 (1). en 10.1525/COLLABRA.25293 Collabra: Psychology Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf University of California Press University of California Press |
| spellingShingle | Pennycook, Gordon Binnendyk, Jabin Newton, Christie Rand, David G A Practical Guide to Doing Behavioral Research on Fake News and Misinformation |
| title | A Practical Guide to Doing Behavioral Research on Fake News and Misinformation |
| title_full | A Practical Guide to Doing Behavioral Research on Fake News and Misinformation |
| title_fullStr | A Practical Guide to Doing Behavioral Research on Fake News and Misinformation |
| title_full_unstemmed | A Practical Guide to Doing Behavioral Research on Fake News and Misinformation |
| title_short | A Practical Guide to Doing Behavioral Research on Fake News and Misinformation |
| title_sort | practical guide to doing behavioral research on fake news and misinformation |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144265 |
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