Narratives have been known to aid in the spread of misinformation. This is because they often seem to provide a causal mechanism for unexplained phenomenon. For example, a seemingly neurologically normal child who gets a vaccine then begins to show signs of autism could be used an anecdotal evidence for the misinformation that vaccines cause autism. Narrative information is also more salient during encoding and retrieval, making it easier to remember. Knowing this, narratives could also be adopted as a corrective measure against misinformation. 

Dual Role of Narratives: Spreading and Correcting Misinformation

Corrective solutions to misinformation could be more advanced when they employ emotional, narrative messaging. 

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Using fact checking to debunk misinformation.

Solution to Misinformation: Corrective

Sangalang, A., Ophir, Y., Capella, J. N. (2019). The Potential for Narrative Correctives to Combat Misinformation. Journal of Communication, 69(3), 298-319. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqz014

The Potential for Narrative Correctives to Combat Misinformation

People continue to believe false information even after it has been proven wrong, especially as it pertains to politics


Continued Influence Effect

A study called “Misinformation Correction across Social Media Platforms” conducted by Wenqing Zhao explores the effectiveness of corrective messaging across multiple social media platforms versus when corrective messaging is only shown on a single social media platform. This study finds that corrective messaging repeated across multiple social media platforms is more effective than corrective messaging alone on a single social media platform. This strategy of using multimedia corrective messaging can be used as a more effective solution for combating misinformation within social media.

Corrective Messaging across Social Media Platforms

A previous study conducted by Ecker et al. found that prior attitudes that are already formed might not have an influence on how effective a correction is as long as the belief change (i.e. the belief in the corrected information) does not force an attitude change from an individual. 

Effect of Correcting Misinformation on Belief and Attitude Changes

Enhanced Correctives for Misinformation

The limitations are that misinformation can have a continued influence effect and there is too much fake news being created to debunk it all.

Limitations to Corrective Interventions 

Social media users observe others being corrected and correct their own misconceptions and attitudes. 

Observational Correction on Social Media

This particular correction refers to misinformation correction on social media offered by a peer who is using the same platform. 
 


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