Checking the Fact-Checkers: The Role of Source Type, Perceived Credibility, and Individual Differences in Fact-Checking Effectiveness

Abstract

This study investigates fact-checking effectiveness in reducing belief in misinformation across various types of fact-check sources (i.e., professional fact-checkers, mainstream news outlets, social media platforms, artificial intelligence, and crowdsourcing). We examine fact-checker credibility perceptions as a mechanism to explain variance in fact-checking effectiveness across sources, while taking individual differences into account (i.e., analytic thinking and alignment with the fact-check verdict). An experiment with 859 participants revealed few differences in effectiveness across fact-checking sources but found that sources perceived as more credible are more effective. Indeed, the data show that perceived credibility of fact-check sources mediates the relationship between exposure to fact-checking messages and their effectiveness for some source types. Moreover, fact-checker credibility moderates the effect of alignment on effectiveness, while analytic thinking is unrelated to fact-checker credibility perceptions, alignment, and effectiveness. Other theoretical contributions include extending the scope of the credibility-persuasion association and the MAIN model to the fact-checking context, and empirically verifying a critical component of the two-step motivated reasoning model of misinformation correction.