The next working group meeting on Digital Activities will take place on Tuesday, 14th January from 5.30pm to 7pm
Speaker: Thomas Renault - University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Paper : Community-based fact-checking reduces the spread of misleading posts on social media
Abstract : Community-based fact-checking is a promising approach to verify social media content and correct misleading posts at scale. Yet, causal evidence regarding its effectiveness in reducing the spread of misinformation on social media is missing. Here, we performed a large-scale empirical study to analyze whether community notes reduce the spread of misleading posts on X. Using a Difference-in-Differences design and repost time series data for N=237,677 (community fact-checked) cascades that had been reposted more than 431 million times, we found that exposing users to community notes reduced the spread of misleading posts by, on average, 62.0%. Furthermore, community notes increased the odds that users delete their misleading posts by 103.4%. However, our findings also suggest that community notes might be too slow to intervene in the early (and most viral) stage of the diffusion. Our work offers important implications to enhance the effectiveness of community-based fact-checking approaches on social media.
Relevant information:
- Here the Microsoft Teams link. The session will cover 90 minutes (questions and answers included).
- The working group is part of the activities of the Governance and Regulation Chair at Paris Dauphine-PSL University. The group meets once in two weeks to discuss, share, and present working papers and/or ideas surrounding recent developments in the domain of platform regulation. We have both internal and external presenters to share their work.
- If you would like to present your work or have anyone in mind to present, please send an email to lucas.eustache@dauphine.psl.eu.
