Bowles, Jeremy;
Croke, Kevin;
Larreguy, Horacio;
Liu, Shelley;
Marshall, John;
(2025)
Sustaining Exposure to Fact-Checks: Misinformation Discernment, Media Consumption, and Its Political Implications.
American Political Science Review
pp. 1-24.
10.1017/s0003055424001394.
(In press).
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Abstract
Exposure to misinformation can affect citizens’ beliefs, political preferences, and compliance with government policies. However, little is known about how to durably reduce susceptibility to misinformation, particularly in the Global South. We evaluate an intervention in South Africa that encouraged individuals to consume biweekly fact-checks—as text messages or podcasts—via WhatsApp for six months. Sustained exposure to these fact-checks induced substantial internalization of fact-checked content, while increasing participants’ ability to discern new political and health misinformation upon exposure—especially when fact-check consumption was financially incentivized. Fact-checks that could be quickly consumed via short text messages or via podcasts with empathetic content were most effective. We find limited effects on news consumption choices or verification behavior, but still observe changes in political attitudes and COVID-19-related behaviors. These results demonstrate that sustained exposure to fact-checks can inoculate citizens against future misinformation, but highlight the difficulty of inducing broader behavioral changes relating to media usage.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Sustaining Exposure to Fact-Checks: Misinformation Discernment, Media Consumption, and Its Political Implications |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1017/s0003055424001394 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055424001394 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Political Science Association. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Political Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10205262 |
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