Jan Priebe (Bernhard-Nocht-Institute for Tropical Medicine): “Combating fake news in health: An online experiment on vaccination in Africa".

Abstract:

In this paper we experimentally test how to best curb the spread of fake news and promote the dissemination of true information on social media. In particular, we evaluate the effectiveness of pre-bunking and de-bunking tools in sharing vaccine-related information on Facebook. We show that fact-checks and forewarnings about misinformation are substantially reducing the sharing of misinformation. In contrast to the existing literature, we shed light on the role of endogenous information acquisition on sharing decisions. Generally, self-selected information are processed more intensely than non-self-selected information, however are equally likely to be shared on social media.