Educative Interventions to Combat Misinformation: Evidence from a Field Experiment in India.
Misinformation makes democratic governance harder, especially in developing countries. Despite its real-world import, little is known about how to combat misinformation outside of the United States, particularly in places with low education, accelerating Internet access, and encrypted information sh...
| Published in: | American Political Science Review Vol. 115; no. 4; pp. 1325 - 1342 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Cambridge University Press
Nov2021
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=159535373&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 159535373 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00030554 APR jtl: American Political Science Review issn: 00030554 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Nov2021 vid: 115 iid: 4 pid: 15979 pub: Cambridge University Press artinfo: ui: 159535373 10.1017/S0003055421000459 ppf: 1325 ppct: 17 formats: tig: atl: Educative Interventions to Combat Misinformation: Evidence from a Field Experiment in India. aug: au: BADRINATHAN, SUMITRA affil: University of Oxford su: India Media literacy Common misconceptions Elections Literacy education Developing countries sug: subj: Media literacy Common misconceptions Elections India Literacy education Developing countries ab: Misinformation makes democratic governance harder, especially in developing countries. Despite its real-world import, little is known about how to combat misinformation outside of the United States, particularly in places with low education, accelerating Internet access, and encrypted information sharing. This study uses a field experiment in India to test the efficacy of a pedagogical intervention on respondents' ability to identify misinformation during the 2019 elections (N = 1,224). Treated respondents received hour-long in-person media literacy training in which enumerators discussed inoculation strategies, corrections, and the importance of verifying misinformation, all in a coherent learning module. Receiving this hour-long media literacy intervention did not significantly increase respondents' ability to identify misinformation on average. However, treated respondents who support the ruling party became significantly less able to identify pro-attitudinal stories. These findings point to the resilience of misinformation in India and the presence of motivated reasoning in a traditionally nonideological party system. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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