Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Democracy ties closely with media since newsprint, radio, and television have drastically changed the way people get informed and participate in politics. While the development of the internet provides space for information to reach a wider audience with a faster speed, it does the same for fake news. Social media further raises concerns about filter bubbles and echo chambers in which like-minded media consumers amplify and reinforce their beliefs. With important elections recently happened in the United States, Brazil, India, Mexico, and European countries, policymakers around the world and across sectors are discussing how to protect the integrity of their democratic systems and citizens from misinformation. A notable challenge for them is how to best combat fake news and alert citizens about potential falsehoods in their information flow without abridging the freedom of speech.

This presented paper suggests a possible policy option: flagging fake news in social media. Grounded in theories of source cue and social referencing, adding red flags onto fake news posts can help the public be aware of misinformation and, consequently, make informed choices. Furthermore, this research argues that, due to source credibility and group thinking, different flagging mechanisms (e.g., who leverages flags and how) can make a difference in changing people’s opinions toward information trustworthiness. The researcher employs an experimental design using surveys on MTurk. In the experiment, the author manipulates the veracity of news stories (real vs. fake), the accuracy of flags (correct vs. incorrect), and the source of flags (fact-checker vs. the crowd) to empirically verify two sets of hypotheses: (1) Flagging has an impact on media consumers’ identification of fake news. To be specific, correct flags help consumers detect misinformation while incorrect flags have a negative impact on their identification; (2) Flags leveraged by fact-checkers and by the crowd differ in their influences on people’s successfulness of recognizing misinformation and how confident they feel about their judgments.

This research contributes to the literature by presenting causal evidence of how information cues like flags reinforce or alter individuals’ understanding of information falsehood. More importantly, it explores a solution that can effectively persuade citizens out of believing in fake news. Proposing flagging as a policy option other than blocking the chain of distribution and deleting posts, this study also informs the government and tech companies like Facebook and Google of an alternative that balances between combating misinformation and protecting the freedom of speech.