Being able to detect, and bypass, misinformation is one of the major challenges of our age. Research from the University of Michigan suggests that by using the internet to search for corroborating evidence, we’re less likely to make biased judgments about misinformation.

Indeed, the study found that if a group of lay people do this and follow the “wisdom of crowds” approach and make independent judgments, they are more reliable than a small panel of journalists.

Assessing misinformation

Participants in the research evaluated nearly 400 articles. The “crowd” was pulled from a representative sample of conservative and liberals, and the researchers were interested in the process by which each participant evaluated the content.

Some of the volunteers were placed in a “no research” condition, in which they simply read the content and gave their assessment. Another group was placed in a condition whereby they conducted research on their own before passing judgment. The final group was placed in a “collective research” condition, whereby they researched the content as a group based on the links provided by the individual group.

The results show that both individual and collective research were able to reduce partisan disagreement about the judgements. Interestingly, however, when participants researched things individually, this was most likely to draw alignment between them and the panel of journalists. Indeed, often they outperformed the journalists. It’s a finding that the researchers believe highlights how powerful the crowd can be.

“In settings where it is expensive or impossible to assemble a panel of journalists, it may be reasonable to use the judgments of crowdworkers as a proxy for the ground truth, but only if you ask the crowdworkers to do some searching before making judgments,” they explain.

“Requiring raters to become more informed before rendering judgments about misinformation reduces partisanship and improves the quality of their ratings.”