Mastodawn

Sacha Altay Dec 22, 2023

Reducing multimedia (📷📽️🎙️) consumption on WhatsApp for three weeks in 🇧🇷 led to a decrease in exposure to true and false news but had no effect on belief in true and false news. It also had no effect on polarization and well-being.

https://ssrn.com/abstract=4457400

Sacha Altay Dec 22, 2023

Quarantining anti-vax forums on Reddit reduces misinfo in these groups, which leads misinfo superspreaders to post misinfo elsewhere.

Yet, this spillover effect is short-lived because anti-vax misinfo does not resonate outside of the anti-vax forums.

https://ssrn.com/abstract=4653460

Sacha Altay Oct 11, 2023

New Working paper!

Should AI-generated content be labeled as such on social media?

We show that these labels would have detrimental consequences on harmless AI content and would be less effective than false labels in preventing the spread of false news.

https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/83k9r

Sacha Altay Jul 28, 2023

New paper in the HKS Misinformation Review 🎉

We surveyed 150 experts on misinformation and identified areas of expert consensus regarding definitions of misinformation, its determinants, solutions, and the future of the field.

https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/a-survey-of-expert-views-on-misinformation-definitions-determinants-solutions-and-future-of-the-field/

A survey of expert views on misinformation: Definitions, determinants, solutions, and future of the field | HKS Misinformation Review

We surveyed 150 academic experts on misinformation and identified areas of expert consensus. Experts defined misinformation as false and misleading information, though views diverged on the importance of intentionality and what exactly constitutes misinformation. The most popular reason why people believe and share misinformation was partisanship, while lack of education was one of the least

Misinformation Review

Sacha Altay May 23, 2023

The last paper of my PhD is out in the British Journal of Social Psychology!

We show in five experiments (🇬🇧🇯🇵) that happy (mis)beliefs (🧙‍♂️🎅👼🧘‍♀️) may spread because they allow senders to signal how nice & kind they are 🥰

🔓 https://psyarxiv.com/3s4nr/
🖨️https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12650

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Sacha Altay Apr 5, 2023

Finally, participants more interested in the news and scoring higher on the CRT were (much) more discerning, but it did not moderate the effects reported above.

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Sacha Altay Apr 5, 2023

The proportion of false news had no effect on discernment (true - false or true/false) or discrimination (AUC), but it increased conservative response bias (i.e., the tendency to rate all news as more false; B"D)

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Sacha Altay Apr 5, 2023

Participants exposed to higher proportions of false news were less trusting of the news and more overconfident in their discernment ability (compared to other participants)

Sacha Altay Apr 5, 2023

New WP 😀

We exposed 2735 participants to various proportions of false news (17%, 33%, 50%, 66% 83%), and found that exposure to higher rates of false news erodes trust in the news and fuels skepticism in news judgment.

👉 psyarxiv.com/t9r43

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Sacha Altay Feb 6, 2023

In 🇧🇷🇮🇳🇬🇧 news use broadened awareness of false claims, but it did not increase belief in them. In 🇬🇧 news use even decreased false beliefs acquisition!

Platforms like YouTube (🇬🇧) and Telegram (🇧🇷) broadened awareness of false claims.

Twitter (🇬🇧) weakened false belief acquisition, while Messenger (🇬🇧), Pinterest (🇬🇧), and LinkedIn (🇧🇷) strengthened false belief acquisition.

Research	https://sites.google.com/view/sacha-altay/research?authuser=0
Science popularization	https://sites.google.com/view/sacha-altay/science-popularization?authuser=0