Battling the coronavirus 'infodemic' among social media users in Kenya and Nigeria.
Nat Hum Behav
; 8(5): 823-834, 2024 May.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38499773
ABSTRACT
How can we induce social media users to be discerning when sharing information during a pandemic? An experiment on Facebook Messenger with users from Kenya (n = 7,498) and Nigeria (n = 7,794) tested interventions designed to decrease intentions to share COVID-19 misinformation without decreasing intentions to share factual posts. The initial stage of the study incorporated (1) a factorial design with 40 intervention combinations; and (2) a contextual adaptive design, increasing the probability of assignment to treatments that worked better for previous subjects with similar characteristics. The second stage evaluated the best-performing treatments and a targeted treatment assignment policy estimated from the data. We precisely estimate null effects from warning flags and related article suggestions, tactics used by social media platforms. However, nudges to consider the accuracy of information reduced misinformation sharing relative to control by 4.9% (estimate = -2.3 percentage points, 95% CI = [-4.2, -0.35]). Such low-cost scalable interventions may improve the quality of information circulating online.
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Difusión de la Información
/
Medios de Comunicación Sociales
/
COVID-19
Límite:
Adult
/
Female
/
Humans
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Male
País/Región como asunto:
Africa
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Nat Hum Behav
Año:
2024
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
Estados Unidos