Media literacy tips promoting reliable news improve discernment and enhance trust in traditional media

Communications Psychology Pub Date : 2024-08-14 DOI:10.1038/s44271-024-00121-5

Sacha Altay, Andrea De Angelis, Emma Hoes

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Abstract

Media literacy tips typically encourage people to be skeptical of the news despite the small prevalence of false news in Western democracies. Would such tips be effective if they promoted trust in true news instead? A pre-registered experiment (N = 3919, US) showed that Skepticism-enhancing tips, Trust-inducing tips, and a mix of both tips, increased participants’ sharing and accuracy discernment. The Trust-inducing tips boosted true news sharing and acceptance, the Skepticism-enhancing tips hindered false news sharing and acceptance, while the Mixed tips did both. Yet, the effects of the tips were more alike than different, with very similar effect sizes across conditions for true and false news. We experimentally manipulated the proportion of true and false news participants were exposed to. The Trust and Skepticism tips were most effective when participants were exposed to equal proportions of true and false news, while the Mixed tips were most effective when exposed to 75% of true news - the most realistic proportion. Moreover, the Trust-inducing tips increased trust in traditional media. Overall, we show that to be most effective, media literacy tips should aim both to foster skepticism towards false news and to promote trust in true news. Media literacy tips promoting trust in true news, skepticism of false news, or a mix of both, were all effective in improving discernment between true and false news stories relative to a control condition without tips.

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宣传可靠新闻的媒体扫盲小贴士可提高辨别力，增强对传统媒体的信任

尽管虚假新闻在西方民主国家并不普遍，但媒体扫盲提示通常鼓励人们对新闻持怀疑态度。如果这些提示能促进人们对真实新闻的信任，那么它们会有效吗？一项预先登记的实验（N = 3919，美国）显示，提高怀疑度的提示、增加信任度的提示以及这两种提示的混合使用，都提高了参与者的分享率和准确性鉴别力。信任诱导提示促进了真实新闻的分享和接受，怀疑主义增强提示阻碍了虚假新闻的分享和接受，而混合提示则两者兼而有之。然而，这些提示的效果与其说是不同的，不如说是相似的，在不同条件下，真实新闻和虚假新闻的效果大小非常相似。我们通过实验操纵了参与者接触到的真假新闻的比例。当参与者接触到的真假新闻比例相同时，信任和怀疑提示的效果最好；而当参与者接触到 75% 的真假新闻时（这是最真实的比例），混合提示的效果最好。此外，"信任诱导 "提示提高了人们对传统媒体的信任度。总之，我们的研究表明，媒体扫盲小贴士要想取得最大的效果，就应该既培养人们对虚假新闻的怀疑态度，又提高人们对真实新闻的信任度。相对于没有提示的对照条件，促进对真实新闻的信任、对虚假新闻的怀疑或两者兼而有之的媒体扫盲提示都能有效提高对真假新闻的辨别能力。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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Communications Psychology

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