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This article analyzes 62 bills introduced in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies between 2019–2022 to understand how legislators frame disinformation into different problems and their respective solutions. The timeframe coincides with the administration of right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro. The study shows a tendency from legislators of parties opposed to Bolsonaro to attempt to criminalize the creation and spread of health-related and government-led disinformation.

This study used data from pre- and post-COVID surveys to examine vaccine attitudes in the United States. We found evidence consistent with an ideological “spillover” effect: Liberals’ attitudes became more positive towards non-COVID vaccines (flu, MMR, HPV, chickenpox) and conservatives’ attitudes became more negative.

We applied a mixed-methods approach with the goal of understanding how Latinx and Asian diaspora communities perceive and experience the spread of misinformation through encrypted messaging apps in the United States. Our study consists of 12 in-depth interviews with leaders of relevant diaspora community organizations and a computer-assisted content analysis of 450,300 messages published on Telegram between July 2020 and December 2021.

In a preliminary analysis of 121,984 posts from X (formerly known as Twitter) containing the hashtag #SaveTheChildren, we found that conspiratorial posts received more engagement than authentic hashtag activism between January 2022 and March 2023. Conspiratorial posts received twice the number of reposts as non-conspiratorial content.

This study integrates research on negativity bias and misinformation, as a comparison of how systematic (negativity) and incidental (misinformation) challenges to the news are perceived differently by audiences. Through a cross-country survey, we found that both challenges are perceived as highly salient and disruptive.

Psychological inoculation interventions, which seek to pre-emptively build resistance against unwanted persuasion attempts, have shown promise in reducing susceptibility to misinformation. However, as many people receive news from popular, mainstream ingroup sources (e.g., a left-wing person consuming left-wing media) which may host misleading or false content, and as ingroup sources may be more persuasive, the impact of source effects on inoculation interventions demands attention.

This study examines the experiences of those who participate in bottom-up user-led responses to misinformation on social media and outlines how they can be better supported via software tools. Findings show that users desire support tools designed to minimize time and effort in identifying misinformation and provide tailored suggestions for crafting responses to misinformation that account for emotional and relational context.

After his acquisition of Twitter, Elon Musk pledged to overhaul verification and moderation policies. These events sparked fears of a rise in influence of contentious actors—notably from the political right. I investigated whether these actors did receive increased engagement over this period by gathering tweet data for accounts that purchased blue-tick verification before and after the Musk takeover.

In an online experiment in India, incentives for sharing factual posts increased sharing compared to no incentivization. However, the type of incentive (monetary or social) did not influence sharing behavior in a custom social media simulation. Curbing misinformation may not require substantial monetary resources; in fact, social media platforms can devise ways to socially incentivize their users for being responsible netizens who share true information.

Amid concerns about misinformation online and bias in news, there are increasing calls on social media to “do your own research.” In an abundant information environment, critical media consumption and information validation are desirable. However, using panel survey data, we find that positive perceptions toward “doing your own research” are associated with holding more misperceptions about COVID-19 and less trust in science over time.