The small effects of short user corrections on misinformation in Brazil, India, and the United Kingdom

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Altay, Sacha and Andi, Simge and Badrinathan, Sumitra and Mont'Alverne, Camila and Toff, Benjamin and Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis and Fletcher, Richard (2025) The small effects of short user corrections on misinformation in Brazil, India, and the United Kingdom. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, 6 (3). ISSN 2766-1652 (https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-179)

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Abstract

How effective are user corrections in combatting misinformation on social media, and does adding a link to a fact check improve their effectiveness? We conducted a pre-registered online experiment on representative samples of the online population in Brazil, India, and the United Kingdom (Nparticipants = 3,000, Nobservations = 24,000). We found that in India and Brazil, short user corrections slightly, but often not significantly, reduced belief in misinformation and participants’ willingness to share it. In the United Kingdom, these effects were even smaller and not significant. We found little evidence that fact-check links made user corrections more effective. Overall, our results suggest that short user corrections have small effects and that adding a fact-check link is unlikely to make user corrections much more effective.

ORCID iDs

Altay, Sacha, Andi, Simge, Badrinathan, Sumitra, Mont'Alverne, Camila ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6100-4879, Toff, Benjamin, Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis and Fletcher, Richard;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)