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Do emotions we experience after reading headlines help us discern true from false information or cloud our judgement? Understanding whether emotions are associated with distinguishing truth from fiction and sharing information has implications for interventions designed to curb the spread of misinformation.

Recent research suggests that shifting users’ attention to accuracy increases the quality of news they subsequently share online. Here we help develop this initial observation into a suite of deployable interventions for practitioners. We ask (i) how prior results generalize to other approaches for prompting users to consider accuracy, and (ii) for whom these prompts are more versus less effective.

This study indicates that news users across ten different European countries are quite concerned about misinformation in their information environment. Respondents are most likely to associate politicians, corporations, and foreign actors with misinformation. They perceive misinformation to be most common for topics like immigration, the economy, and the environment.

Social media companies have begun to use content-based alerts in their efforts to combat mis- and disinformation, including fact-check corrections and warnings of possible falsity, such as “This claim about election fraud is disputed.” Another harm reduction tool, source alerts, can be effective when a hidden foreign hand is known or suspected.

With the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic came a flood of novel misinformation. Ranging from harmless false cures to dangerous rhetoric targeting minorities, coronavirus-related misinformation spread quickly wherever the virus itself did. Fact-checking organizations around the world took up the charge against misinformation, essentially crowdsourcing the task of debunking false narratives.

Before there was a term called media literacy education, there was an interdisciplinary group of writers and thinkers who taught people to guard themselves against the manipulative power of language. One of the leaders of this group was Neil Postman, known for his best-selling book published in 1985, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.

Propaganda analysis has long focused on revealing the rhetorical tricks and hidden special interests behind persuasion campaigns. But what are critics to do when propaganda is obvious? In the late 1930s the Institute for Propaganda Analysis faced this question while investigating the public politicking of A&P, then the largest retailer in the United States.

Misinformation studies relies, to some extent, on access to data from large technology firms, which also seed grants, sponsor events, and support think tanks working in the field. These companies, facing scrutiny from regulators and critics, have a stake in their portrayal.

Historically, scholars studying propaganda have focused on its psychological and behavioral impacts on audiences. This tradition has roots in the unique historical trajectory of the United States through the 20th century. This article argues that this tradition is quite inadequate to tackle propaganda-related issues in the Global South, where a deep understanding of the political economy of propaganda and misinformation is urgently needed.

The Mexican government communicated public health information in the early 20th century during radio programs dedicated to women. Turning to a platform committed to instruction and cultural programming, it publicized health education bulletins, which were sandwiched between weather reports and on-air cooking classes.