Five Myths about Misinformation

What I was wrong about when I wrote our grant proposal

Hannah Metzler
Complexity Science Hub & Medical University of Vienna

Vienna Behavioral Circle
May 16 2024

• Emomis project, Jula, Apeksha
• Experimental and provocative: mostly not our results, but
• the most fascinating things I’ve learnt in this project
• things I’ve changed my mind about, show you how wrong young fields of science can be, how quickly they evolve
• we’ve learnt a lot, very successful project!
• Slides and links clickable

Duration: 8 minutes, without the slide on problems with these myths

Myth 1: People are gullible

• People are easy to manipulate.

Solutions?

• Facts! Education!
• Make them more skeptical

The Science:

• It’s hard to change people’s mind.
• People are too skeptical.
• Alarmist narrative has negative effects.

Myth 2: Emotions = Irrationality

• Emotions make people fall for misinformation

Solutions?

• Make them less emotional
• Focus on accuracy

The Science:

• Emotions can indicate recognition
• Emotions are functional

Myth 3: There’s a lot of misinformation

Solutions?

• Reduce it & warn people

The Science:

• Only 1-6% of all news.
• Most people don’t read the news.

• Motivated minority shares majority of misinfo: 1%, 5%, 2%
• Misinformation from the top!

Myth 4: Misinformation drives behavior

• Strong effects on opinions and behavior.

Solutions?

• Reduce it, facts, warning, inoculations etc.

The Science:

• Russian disinformation attacks during 2016 Trump election: no effects on attitudes, polarization & voting (study 1, 2)
• Even mass media have small effects at best

Myth 5: It’s social media’s fault!

• Algorithms radicalize people
• Echo chambers cause polarization

Solutions?

• Dissolve echo chambers & turn off algorithms

The Science:

• People look for radical content.
• No algorithm effects on opinions & emotions (studies 1, 2, 3)
• Echo chambers are larger offline, reducing them backfires.

• I know this sounds like I don’t think there’s any problem, which is not true either.
• I just want to make the point that misinformation (manipulation) is overestimated, it’s never a good idea to assume people are stupid, and that not everything is social media’s fault.
• I’ll leave you hanging in suspense about what I think the actual role of social media is, you’ll have to check out our website, a podcast I did recently, or watch Doc dok 1 on ORF next Friday.

So what?

• Reducing misinformation will not solve the real problems
• Alarmist narrative reduces trust in reliable news
• Misinformation & social media companies are scapegoats to avoid doing the hard work

images: vaccine hesitancy, ethnic tensions, sexism, racism, polarization

Doing the hard work

• Improve democratic, medical & scientific institutions
• Trustworthy & transparent politics & media
• Address societal inequalities and conflicts
  • Climate change, poverty, sexism, education, globalization, racism…

Thank you!

More on our project: https://hannahmetzler.eu/emomis

Podcast

Kurzgesagt Video

ORF Documentary May 29

Misinformation myths

• People are gullible
• Emotions make people irrational
• People are exposed to a lot of misinformation
• Misinformation has strong effects on behavior
• Algorithms radicalize people
• Echo chambers cause the problem

Truth

• It’s hard to change people’s minds
• Emotions are functional
• Misinformation (and news) exposure are low
• Persuasion has very small effects
• Algorithms are not an all round solution
• Dissolving echo chambers causes polarization

Wrong solutions

• reduce misinformation
• reduce emotions
• make people more skeptical
• reduce echo chambers