Do Your Own Research? Searching Online About Misinformation Increases Belief
Kevin Aslett, Zeve Sanderson, William Godel, Nathaniel Persily, Jonathan Nagler, and Joshua A. Tucker
In recent years, to combat phenomena associated with democratic dysfunction linked to exposure to misinformation, significant attention has been paid to understanding the spread of and belief in online misinformation, with a particular focus on social media platforms. However, the dominant role of search engines in the digital information ecosystem remains under-explored, even though the use of online search is a central component of media literacy interventions encouraged by technology companies, government agencies, and civil society organizations alike. In this paper, we test the effect of online search on belief in false news stories. Although conventional wisdom suggests this strategy would reduce belief, there is little empirical evidence with which to evaluate its effect. Across five experiments, we present consistent evidence that searching for information online increases the likelihood of believing misinformation, in some cases by up to 30%. To shed light on this relationship, in our fifth study we combine survey and digital trace data, collected using a custom browser extension, to investigate the cause. We find empirical evidence that suggests the amount of low-quality information returned by search engines increases belief in misinformation, and that this effect is concentrated in individuals with lower levels of digital literacy. Our results show the positive but heterogeneous effects of online search on belief in misinformation and provide empirical evidence for the impact of unreliable information returned by search engines.
Open the R Project and make sure the the two files of code are loaded: Main_text_Figures.R, Extended_Data.R, Supplemementary_Materials.R
There are four directories:
(1) Code: In the code directory there lies three R files that produce important figures and tables in the main document and the supplementary methods and materials:
(1.1) Main_text_Figures.R: Produces figures for the main text.
(1.2) Extended_Data.R: Prodcues figures for the extended data_
(1.3) Supplemementary_Materials.R: Produces figures and tables for the supplementary materials and methods.
(2) Data: Contains all data needed to run the scripts
(3) Figures: All the figures produced by the three R files in the code directory are located here.
(4) Tables: All the tables produced by the three R files in the code directory are located here.
The txt files sessionInfo_main.txt (1), sessionInfo_suppl_mat.txt (2), and sessionInfo_extended_data.txt (3) report the version of R and the version of packages used to generate that figures and the tables in the two R files in the code directory.