Misinformation remains a major threat to US democratic integrity, national security, and public health. However, social media platforms struggle to curtail the spread of the harmful but engaging content. Across platforms, McLoughlin et al. examined the role of emotions, specifically moral outrage (a mixture of disgust and anger), in the diffusion of misinformation. Compared with trustworthy news sources, posts from misinformation sources evoked more angry reactions and outrage than happy or sad sentiments. Users were motivated to reshare content that evoked outrage and shared it without reading it first to discern accuracy. Interventions that solely emphasize sharing accurately may fail to curb misinformation because users may share outrageous, inaccurate content to signal their moral positions or loyalty to political groups.
i think the importance of the study is that it shows that when misinformation is spread via outrage, countering it with accurate information has little to no effect. new ways to counter this kind of spread would need to be devised
Editor’s summary
Misinformation remains a major threat to US democratic integrity, national security, and public health. However, social media platforms struggle to curtail the spread of the harmful but engaging content. Across platforms, McLoughlin et al. examined the role of emotions, specifically moral outrage (a mixture of disgust and anger), in the diffusion of misinformation. Compared with trustworthy news sources, posts from misinformation sources evoked more angry reactions and outrage than happy or sad sentiments. Users were motivated to reshare content that evoked outrage and shared it without reading it first to discern accuracy. Interventions that solely emphasize sharing accurately may fail to curb misinformation because users may share outrageous, inaccurate content to signal their moral positions or loyalty to political groups.
There are several kinds of "hooks" the make content go viral. Outrage is one of them, it might even be the best one. It's not the only one.
i think the importance of the study is that it shows that when misinformation is spread via outrage, countering it with accurate information has little to no effect. new ways to counter this kind of spread would need to be devised