Studies 3 & 4– accuracy rating and sharing surveys 
- 727 (study 3) and 780 (study 4) participants from MTurk were shown 24 news headlines like in study 1
- Control group participants asked how likely they would share each headline on Facebook
- Treatment group first asked to rate accuracy of headlines before sharing intentions

Study 5 – representative population 
- 1268 participants from Lucid with age, gender, ethnicity, and geographic region that supposedly represented American residents 
- Active control condition asked participants to rate how humorous headlines were instead of accuracy 
- Importance treatment asked participants how important they think sharing just accurate information is in general

Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online - primary accuracy studies

Study 1 – headline accuracy and sharing 
- Showed 1015 participants from Mechanical Turk 36 news stories with corresponding headlines, lede sentences, and pictures from social media
- Half true, half false
- Half in favor of Democrats; half in favor of Republicans
- Participants randomly asked to decipher the accuracy of the news articles (accuracy condition) or whether they would share it or not (sharing condition)

Study 2 – rating importance of accuracy in sharing 
- 401 participants recruited from Lucid
- Asked to rate the importance of accuracy in sharing content on social media compared to other factors

Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online - sharing and accuracy studies

Study 6 - inattention to headline accuracy
- Recruited 710 participants from MTurk
- Full attention treatment participants asked to rate the accuracy of headlines before sharing intentions

Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online - attention to accuracy study

Study 7 - Twitter DMs asking users to consider headline accuracy
- 5379 Twitter users who have shared links from 2 untrustworthy sites (Breitbart.com and Inforwars.com) were recruited 
- Sent the users messages to rate accuracy of headlines
- Studied users’ sharing behaviors (accuracy and engagement levels) after the private messages using a stepped-wedge/randomized roll-out design 
- Accuracy level calculated by subtracting number of misinformation links from mainstream sources shared daily 
- High-engagement users add to posts rather than simply retweeting (takes more effort to research and write) 

Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online - Twitter intervention study

- Disconnect between sharing and accuracy (studies 1, 2)
- Priming accuracy improves sharing (studies 3, 4, 5)
- Attention to accuracy as a mechanism (study 6)
- Deploying the intervention on Twitter (study 7)

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Researchers wanted to study how they can subtly shift people’s attention away from misinformation and push them to share only accurate information on social media. They found that people’s sharing intentions extend beyond their beliefs, and that many people often do not pay much attention to the accuracy of the information they are sharing. Thus, this study addresses ways to shift people’s focus through attention-based interventions to reduce the spread of misinformation on social media through 3 factors: 
- Confusion about accuracy - People don’t realize they’re sharing misinformation
- Preferences for sharing information that aligns with one’s belief over accuracy
- Inattention to misinformation 

Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online

Pennycook, G., Epstein, Z., Mosleh, M., Arechar, A. A., Eckles, D., & Rand, D. G. (2021). Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online. Nature, 592(7855), 590-595. https://psyarxiv.com/3n9u8 

Disconnect between sharing and accuracy (studies 1, 2)
- People’s preferences play a huge role in determining whether they would share an accurate or inaccurate headline, even if they know that accuracy is most important 
- Political alignment, attract followers, belonging to a group of like-minded individuals 

Deploying the intervention on Twitter (study 7)
- Network dynamics – when users start sharing accurate information, their followers also see that and in turn become more cognizant of what they are really sharing 
- Social media platforms can occasionally ask users to rate the accuracy of headlines to subtly remind them of the importance of sharing only accurate information 

Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online - discussion

- Continue with the Twitter study to look at the effects of shock-based treatments
- Study the effects of users following back accounts researchers use 
- Focus on the quality of specific articles that users share instead of a generalized score based on the news source

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