Can WhatsApp benefit from debunked fact-checked stories to reduce misinformation?
Julio C. S. Reis, Philipe Melo, Kiran Garimella and Fabrício Benevenuto
WhatsApp was alleged to have been widely used to spread misinformation and propaganda during the 2018 elections in Brazil and the 2019 elections in India. Due to the private encrypted nature of the messages on WhatsApp, it is hard to track the dissemination of misinformation at scale.
Exposure to social engagement metrics increases vulnerability to misinformation
Mihai Avram, Nicholas Micallef, Sameer Patil and Filippo Menczer
News feeds in virtually all social media platforms include engagement metrics, such as the number of times each post is liked and shared. We find that exposure to these signals increases the vulnerability of users to low-credibility information in a simulated social media feed.
Repress/redress: What the “war on terror” can teach us about fighting misinformation
Alexei Abrahams and Gabrielle Lim
Misinformation, like terrorism, thrives where trust in conventional authorities has eroded. An informed policy response must therefore complement efforts to repress misinformation with efforts to redress loss of trust. At present, however, we are repeating the mistakes of the war on terror, prioritizing repressive, technologically deterministic solutions while failing to redress the root sociopolitical grievances that cultivate our receptivity to misinformation in the first place.