Effects of Automated Misinformation Warning Labels on the Intents to Like, Comment and Share Posts

TL;DR

It is found that the generic warnings suppressed intents to comment on and share posts, but not on the intent to like them, suggesting that the reasons for the labels were inconsistent and could have undesirably motivated engagement instead.

Abstract

With fact-checking by professionals being difficult to scale on social media, algorithmic techniques have been considered. However, it is uncertain how the public may react to labels by automated fact-checkers. In this study, we investigate the use of automated warning labels derived from misinformation detection literature and investigate their effects on three forms of post engagement. Focusing on political posts, we also consider how partisanship affects engagement. In a two-phases within-subjects experiment with 200 participants, we found that the generic warnings suppressed intents to comment on and share posts, but not on the intent to like them. Furthermore, when different reasons for the labels were provided, their effects on post engagement were inconsistent, suggesting that the reasons could have undesirably motivated engagement instead. Partisanship effects were observed across the labels with higher engagement for politically congruent posts. We discuss the implications on the design and use of automated warning labels.

Figures (2)

• Figure 1: The experiment interface showing a post with the generic label and the engagement options to Like, Comment and Share.
• Figure 2: An example post with the generic label. Examples of the knowledge, source and propagation labels are shown below.