Last year researchers from the University of Cambridge developed a game designed to help us spot fake news online.  The game puts the player in the shows of the budding propagandist to hopefully give an insight into the strategies and motivations behind misinformation campaigns.  The aim is to provide a level of ‘immunity’ to fake news.

It’s an interesting attempt to educate people on the way fake news is created, the form it takes, and how to spot it when we encounter it.  A new study from Vanderbilt University takes another approach, and tries to prevent people from sharing the fake news they find online.

The researchers hypothesize that most of us share content instinctively rather than engaging rational thought before doing so.  As such, they experimented with trying to introduce active reasoning into the sharing process to see how that affects the sharing of fake news.

Explain the headline

The researchers conducted an experiment to explore if asking people to share the headline of the article they were about to share impacted their intention to share it on social media.

Over 500 volunteers took part in the experiment, each being presented with a number of headlines, before being asked to consider whether the headline was true or false, and then whether they wanted to share it.  The data showed that this simple request to stop and think was often sufficient to significantly reduce the number of false stories that were shared.

“Taking that pause likely helped participants consult their prior knowledge and realize that the false headlines were incorrect,” the researchers say. “It also may have slowed people down and encouraged them to think more deeply about their actions rather than simply relying on their gut instinct.”

The project builds upon previous research, which suggests that asking people for an explanation helps to bridge any gap in people’s perceived knowledge and their actual knowledge.  It’s a feature that has been rolled out on Instagram recently, with users asked if they really want to post this whenever content contains potentially bullying messages.  It’s something that could equally work in the context of fake news.

“We suggest that social media companies should encourage these pauses to help people to consider the accuracy and quality of what they are posting,” they say. “People may initially be willing to share false information, but with a pause, they are better able to resist that tendency.”