Explore All Articles

Misinformation research often draws optimistic conclusions, with fact-checking, for example, being established as an effective means of reducing false beliefs. However, it rarely considers the details of socioeconomic disparities that often shape who is most vulnerable to science misinformation. Historical and systemic inequalities have fostered mistrust in institutions, limiting access to credible information, for example, when Black patients distrust public health guidance due to past medical racism.

Following the leadership transition on October 27, 2022, Twitter/X underwent a notable change in platform governance. This study investigates how these changes influenced information quality for registered U.S. voters and the platform more broadly. We address this question by analyzing two complementary datasets—a Twitter panel and a Decahose sample.

The potential for harm entrenched in mis- and disinformation content, regardless of intentionality, opens space for a new analytical agenda to investigate the weaponization of identity-based features like gender, race, and ethnicity through the lens of violence. Therefore, we lay out the triangle of violence to support new studies aiming to investigate multimedia content, victims, and audiences of false claims.

This editorial provides an overview of the key statistics for Volume 5 (2024) of the HKS Misinformation Review, including submission and acceptance rates, accepted article types, publication speed and frequency, citation impact, most-viewed articles, engagement and readership, as well as author and reviewer demographics.

This study investigates the impact of educational interventions and feedback on users’ ability to detect manipulated images on social media, addressing a gap in research that has primarily focused on algorithmic approaches. Through a pre-registered randomized and controlled experiment, we found that feedback and educational content significantly improved participants’ ability to detect manipulated images on social media.

Experts consider misinformation a significant societal concern due to its associated problems like political polarization, erosion of trust, and public health challenges. However, these broad effects can occur independently of misinformation, illustrating a misalignment with the narrow focus of the prevailing misinformation concept.

State media outlets spread propaganda disguised as news online, prompting social media platforms to attach state-affiliated media tags to their accounts. Do these tags reduce belief in state media misinformation? Previous studies suggest the tags reduce misperceptions but focus on Russia, and current research does not compare these tags with other interventions.

Search engine audit studies—where researchers query a set of terms in one or more search engines and analyze the results—have long been instrumental in assessing the relative reliability of search engines. However, on alt-tech platforms, users often conduct a different form of search engine audit.

We surveyed 1,000 U.S. adults to understand concerns about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) during the 2024 U.S. presidential election and public perceptions of AI-driven misinformation. Four out of five respondents expressed some level of worry about AI’s role in election misinformation.