That's Simple Prompt Could Fix Our Fake News Problem
At a Republican Party fundraiser in 2019, former President Donald Trump talked about American energy policy.
After endorsing higher domestic production of fossil fuels, he spoke derisively about alternative energy sources, including wind power. “They say the noise causes cancer,” he said of wind turbines.
The comment drew criticism from wind-energy advocates. It also spurred at least one credulous research analysis into the link between wind turbines and cancer. (That analysis found that living near turbines “does not appear to increase cancer incidence.”)
While the cancer comment doesn’t stand out amid the forest of dubious Trump statements, it’s a prime example of one of the former President’s favorite rhetorical devices: the “I heard” hedge. As the Washington Post and others have observed, Trump loves to preface his more controversial assertions with “I heard,” “people are saying,” and other they-said-it-not-me qualifiers. It’s a nifty trick. If challenged to defend or explain his remarks, he can argue, honestly, that he never claimed what he said was true. He was merely repeating something he heard.
Accuracy endorsements sidestep the weaknesses of top-down attempts to police news content.
New research finds that this sort of accountability dodge may underlie the spread of fake news.
For a study published last month in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers examined whether certain types of accuracy prompts could affect how people share news on social media. In one of their experiments, they added a few simple words to an article’s share button: “I think this news is accurate.”
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The effect of that addition was remarkable. People were roughly 40% less likely to share fake news links. They were also about 25% more likely to share real news content.
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