Compared to research on the 2016 election, preliminary findings on coronavirus misinformation suggest more people are seeing—and believing—misinformation now. It may have something to do with the challenge of understanding a new disease.
Many Americans are also having difficulty discerning accurate information. For example, in the Cornell paper, when shown headlines about treatments for COVID-19, 40 percent of respondents, on average, judged real headlines in this category to be true, and the remaining 60 percent were “almost evenly divided between identifying the headline as false or acknowledging that they were unsure.
” “If people are unable to discern and say that true information is true, that is a real problem from a public health perspective,” said Sarah Kreps, a government and law professor at Cornell and a co-author of the paper., respondents were able to distinguish between accurate and false information about COVID-19 pretty well when prompted to. But when asked only whether they would share the information on social media — and not if they believe it to be true or not — more were willing to share fake news. “They still only believe true content like 65-ish percent of the time and the false content they believe like 25 percent of the time, so not great but at least there’s a difference,” Pennycook said. “If instead you ask them which ones they would share on social media, they’re terrible at discerning between them. They don’t, basically.” One of the reasons we might be seeing more people falling for misinformation is the knowledge gap that comes with an emerging disease like COVID-19. There’s a lot we still don’t know about this virus, and that lack of understanding can create a vacuum that is all too easily filled by conspiracy theories and misinformation. “An analogy that might be helpful here is autism: science still doesn’t have a clear explanation of why autism occurs,” said Brendan Nyhan, a government professor at Dartmouth College who studies disinformation. “That’s created a demand for explanations of why children develop it that anti-vaccine activists have taken advantage of. They’ve provided a simple story of why children develop autism, taking advantage of the coincidence in time between when autism manifests and when children get vaccines.” So what do we do while we wait for better scientific answers on COVID-19? Social media sites, for their part, have
Please follow us on Google to support usUnited States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News: You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Beijing Scraps GDP Target, a Bad Sign for World Reliant on China GrowthChina broke with more than a quarter-century of tradition by eschewing an economic growth target for 2020, a stark acknowledgment of the challenges facing the world’s second-largest economy as it grapples with uncertainties around the coronavirus pandemic.
Read more »
'This is a bad practice': Doctors question FDA protocol for plasma treatment of coronavirus patientsThe story of convalescent plasma is one of a federal medical establishment wanting badly to compensate for its slow response to the coronavirus.
Read more »
I Wish I’d Realized How Bad My Ex’s Drinking Was“For many of those early years we were together, I was totally oblivious to how much he was drinking. Looking back, there were certainly signs. I was naïve and in such denial that I even asked my doctor if there was such a thing as an allergy to alcohol”
Read more »
Why the pandemic is bad news for the new space industrySpaceX’s Crew Dragon is set to launch its historic Demo-2 mission next week to deliver two astronauts to the International Space Station — a first for Elon Musk’s company and the maiden voyage for a commercially owned spacecraft
Read more »
Pamela Anderson 'Didn't Like' Dwayne Johnson's Baywatch Movie: 'Keep the Bad TV as Bad TV'Pamela Anderson may have made a cameo in the 2017 film, but she still prefers the original series
Read more »
Baltimore mayor says Trump sending 'bad, bad message' with plan to visit on Memorial DayThe mayor of Baltimore is urging President Trump to rethink his visit to the city on Memorial Day, arguing that the visit would contradict stay-at-home orders he's issued for residents and drain public safety resources
Read more »