The role of fact-checking strategies in the validation process of misinformation

Project leader: Olesya Koltsova
Project participants: Elena Artemenko, Evgenia Alenina, Maxim Terpilovsky

The project is a comprehensive study of users' strategies for verifying consumed information in social networks on a behavioral level (online research) and with the involvement of eye-tracking (laboratory research). The project is aimed at exploring various predictors in the perception of the credibility of information messages by news consumers, in line with the Laboratory's primary research interest in forming tools for validating unreliable information.

The relevance of studying information verification skills stems from the widespread dissemination of disinformation in the global information environment, leading to destructive social consequences, such as undermining vaccination campaigns or causing panic during natural disasters. However, to date, there have been no experimental studies on information perception that allow participants to verify information, and even fewer that specifically investigate their strategies. In the absence of verification options, users generally demonstrate a low quality of fake recognition; it appears that such fact-checking could be a decisive factor in combating fakes at an individual level and, therefore, warrants investigation.

The goal of this research is twofold: firstly, to assess the role of fact-checking and expertise levels in people's ability to validate the credibility of informational messages, and secondly, to identify the most effective information verification strategies.

The project combines an online study with a large sample size and a laboratory experiment collecting oculomotor activity data.

The first part of the study (online experiment) involves an online research effort (with 1200 participants), where individuals are presented with a specially designed web interface to assess the credibility of health-related messages. Participants' ability to fact-check information on the internet is not restricted.

The laboratory experiment aligns with the online data collection (see points 1-3), yet in laboratory settings, specialized software (PupilCapture, Pupil Labs GmbH, 2021) and hardware are used to record ocular activity while reading news messages. Oculomotor activity recording will be conducted using a portable mobile eye-tracker (Pupil Core from Pupil Labs GmbH, 2021) developed by the Laboratory of Social and Cognitive Informatics. During the laboratory verification of statements, the participant's screen will also be recorded to identify statement verification strategies. The protocol for conducting the laboratory part of the study is presented in Appendix B.

News about the project:

The results of the project's implementation were presented during Olesya Koltsova's open lecture at Oxford. The lecture's topic was "Disinformation about Health: Barriers to its Recognition by Information Consumers and the Limits of the Concept of Medical 'Truth'."

The full recording of the lecture is available on YouTube.