New Article: “Journalistic Interventions Matter: Understanding How Americans Perceive Fact-Checking Labels”

The article linked below was recently published by the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review.

Title

Journalistic Interventions Matter: Understanding How Americans Perceive Fact-Checking Labels

Authors

Chenyan Jia
Northeastern University

Taeyoung Lee
University of Houston

Source

Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review

DOI: 10.37016/mr-2020-138

Essay Summary

• To examine how people perceive the efficacy of different types of fact-checking labels, we conducted a national survey of U.S. adults (N = 1,003) in March 2022. The sample demographics are comparable to the U.S. internet population in terms of gender, age, race/ethnicity, education, and income.
• We found that the perceived efficacy of third-party fact checker labels was the highest, which was higher than the perceived efficacy of algorithmic labels and other user labels. The effectiveness of news media labels was perceived as the second highest, but the statistically meaningful difference was detected only with user labels; the perceived efficacy of news media labels was not statistically different from labels by fact checkers and algorithms. There was no significant difference between the labels created by users and algorithms.
• We also found that political and media-related variables are associated with the perceptions of fact-checking labels. Republicans evaluated the effectiveness of all types of fact-checking labels lower than Democrats. News media trust and attitudes toward social media were positively associated with the perceived effectiveness of all types of labels. These findings hold true for Democrats and Republicans in most cases. For Republicans, the positive association between media trust and the perceived efficacy of user labels was not statistically significant, which was the only exception.
• Our findings highlight the importance of institutions enacting journalistic interventions, suggesting the need for closer collaboration between platforms and professional fact checkers, rather than relying too much on automated or crowdsourcing techniques in countering misinformation. To promote conservative users’ trust in fact-checking, professional fact checkers also need to be transparent and objective in their selection of claims to verify.

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