Promoting Accurate Information on Social Media

这项研究面临着双重挑战，即理解是什么决定了人们是接受还是拒绝误导性信息，以及如何才能纠正这种错误信息--或者更好的是，首先防止它的传播。私人投资机构将政治学和认知科学结合起来，以了解影响错误信念形成和修正的条件，以及如何促进准确信息的传播。PI产生的洞察力将有助于推动围绕信念更新的理论，因为它调和了关于政治知识的作用和来自政治学和认知科学的复杂性的明显相互矛盾的结果。PI的工作推进了关于在线分享动机的新兴理论。除了这些智力上的好处，这项工作还将直接为鼓励人们成为更负责任和更知情的公民的努力提供信息，特别是在网上。减少对不准确信息的信任和分享有利于民主社会，因为它可以帮助公民做出反映其偏好的决定。个人投资者确定了相信误导性信息的认知基础。先前的研究通常强调两个因素中的一个：政治知识或认知风格。然而，通过孤立地考察这两个概念，以往的学者已经无法理清每个因素的独立影响。在一系列拟议的相关性和实验性调查研究中，PI将政治知识和认知风格并列在一起，以了解这两个因素是否以及以何种方式独立地塑造了对不准确信息的信念和反应。基于第一部分工作的结果，私人投资机构开发了一套行为干预措施，以鼓励人们成为更负责任的公民。虽然以前纠正误导性信息的方法主要涉及提供特定的事实信息片段，如事实核查消息，但它们倾向于两种替代策略：(1)提高个人在线遇到的内容的质量，(2)引导个人在评估这些内容时更多地关注准确性。PIs使用调查实验和社交媒体实地实验来评估这种方法的有效性。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This research takes on the twin challenges of understanding what determines whether people accept or reject misleading information, and what can be done to correct such misinformation – or, better yet, prevent its dissemination in the first place. The PIs integrate political science and cognitive science to understand the conditions that influence the formation and revision of false beliefs, and how to foster the spread of accurate information. The insights that the PIs generate will help to advance theories around belief updating by reconciling apparently contradictory results regarding the role of political knowledge and sophistication from political science and cognitive science. The PIs' work advances emerging theories concerning motivations for online sharing. In addition to these intellectual benefits, the work will also directly inform efforts to encourage people to be more responsible and informed citizens, especially online. Reducing belief in, and sharing of, inaccurate information benefits democratic societies by helping citizens make decisions that reflect their preferences.The PIs identify the cognitive basis of belief in misleading information. Prior research typically emphasizes one of two factors: political knowledge or cognitive style. However, by examining these two concepts in isolation, previous scholars have been unable to disentangle the independent influence of each factor. Across a series of proposed correlation and experimental survey studies, the PIs juxtapose political knowledge and cognitive style, in order to understand whether, and in what ways, these two factors independently shape belief in and responses to inaccurate information. Based on the results of this first strand of work, the PIs develop a set of behavioral interventions to encourage people to become more responsible citizens. While previous approaches to correcting misleading information have primarily involved the provision of specific pieces of factual information, such as fact-checking messages, They instead favor two alternative sets of strategies: (1) improving the quality of content that individuals encounter online, and (2) inducing individuals to pay greater attention to accuracy when evaluating this content. The PIs evaluate the effectiveness of such approaches using survey experiments and social media field experiments.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.