Fake news has been so prevalent during the Covid pandemic that the World Health Organization stated that we’re in the midst of an infodemic equally as damaging as the pandemic.  The phenomenon did not begin with the pandemic, with concerns raised about the impact of fake news on the Brexit referendum and the Trump election, but its usage has increased in recent years.

Most of the time, we presume that fake news has a negative impact on our behavior, but recent research from University College Dublin set out to find out just how true that assumption is.

The researchers recruited several thousand volunteers for experiments whereby they were each shown four true stories relating to the pandemic, plus two fake news stories.  The stories were chosen to be as reflective of current stories as possible, and included the fake assertion that drinking coffee protects us from Covid or that chili peppers might reduce symptoms.

After reading each story, the volunteers were asked to say how likely they were to act on the information in the story in the months ahead.  Would they be more likely to drink coffee, for instance?

Minimal change

The results show that while there was a change in people’s behavior, it was far from a dramatic change.  For instance, those who were shown a fake story about privacy concerns surrounding the contact-tracing app were 5% less likely to download it than those who hadn’t read the story.

Some participants even seemed to develop false memories about some of the fake stories they read, with these false memories more likely to result in behavior change.  Even here though, the effect was relatively small and was not observed with every kind of fake story.

These small changes can’t be discounted, however, and the researchers highlight the unfounded concerns around the MMR vaccine resulted in a 10% drop in childhood vaccinations, which in turn was sufficient to drive a spike in measles cases.

Suffice to say, the researchers openly admit that their study was only measuring the intention to change behavior rather than actual changes in behavior, so it’s quite possible that our intentions won’t align with our actions.  They also concede that participants only read stories once and that the intention to change may be far greater after repeated exposure to the same narrative.

Nonetheless, they are confident that their findings should create cause for concern, especially as they also found that delivering warnings about misinformation did little to mitigate the impact of the fake news.