How Well Can People Spot Fake News?

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Fake news is more widespread today than ever before.

Political activists who want to unfairly influence voters create false news stories. Unscrupulous media companies publish falsehoods as clickbait. Political regimes spread false propaganda to support their policies. And the blurring line between entertainment and news leads to writing that doesn’t comply with journalistic standards.

The proliferation of fake news has led to a new body of research on the topic: Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, more than 4,000 scientific articles have been published on the topic of false news. A systematic review published last month asks the question, how good at people are judging the accuracy of the news?

The meta-analysis, published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, combined data from 67 studies that included more than 194,000 participants from 40 countries. Articles included in the analysis asked participants to identify news stories as true or false. Researchers found that study participants were, for the most part, able to discern between true and false news. (The researchers call this discernment.) Their analysis found that participants were able to detect true news from false news, and were more skeptical of news that was false.

Researchers also examined how often participants mistakenly labeled true news as false—a tendency known as skepticism bias. They found that participants were more likely to doubt true news than to believe false news.

This speaks to the broader problem of misinformation in society, the study authors explained in the paper. “The problem may be less that people are gullible and fall for falsehoods too easily, but instead that people are excessively skeptical and do not believe reliable information enough,” they wrote.

The authors also wrote that this increased skepticism is concerning because evidence shows that, across the globe, trust in the news media is declining and more people are avoiding the news.

In their analysis, the presence of a source did not have a statistically significant effect on discernment or skepticism bias; neither did the topic of the news. Participants were more skeptical toward headlines presented in a social media format, with an image and summary text, or with an image compared to news story with only text headlines.

Participants were able to better identify true and false news that aligned with their political beliefs. They were also able to identify false news that conflicted with their political stance, but were more skeptical of news that conflicted with their beliefs. “This supports the idea that people are not excessively gullible of news they agree with, but are instead excessively skeptical of news they disagree with,” the researchers wrote. “This suggests that interventions…should focus more on increasing openness to opposing viewpoints than on increasing skepticism towards concordant viewpoints.”

Of course, the antidote to misinformation is truth. In recent decades, organizations and companies have grown that are dedicated to shedding light on false news.

The International Fact-Checking Network promotes non-partisan, transparent fact-checking of news sources. One organization they rate highly is Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania which monitors the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases. Another is Snopes, an independent company that conducts publishes fact-checking articles and independent investigations.

The take-home message: Fake news abounds! In an age of misinformation, research shows that people are able to identify false news, but are also more likely to be skeptical of true news stories.