While it was hypothesized that placing negation first in fact checking would decrease the likelihood of dissociating the negation and the core message by strengthening the associations of the schema-plus-tag model and employing distrustful encoding, this was found to not be the case. No matter what the placement of the negation, people forget the link at similar rates.

Fact checking and Placement of negation

The Schema-plus-tag model relates to fact checking because it posits the idea that people may forget the link between the negation of the fact check and the false claim it is debunking.

University of Delaware

This model suggests that when people are processing a negated message, they first internalize the core affirmative message, and then add on the negation. For example, if the sentence being processed is "Sue does not like cake", first "Sue likes cake" is processed, then the "does not" part is added in. Over time, people may forget the link between the core statement and the negation and start to misremember.

Schema-plus-tag Model for Negated Messages

The process of determining the accuracy of information. Often performed and published by professional fact checkers such as Politifact or Snopes.

Fact Checking

Pillai, R. M., Brown-Schmidt, S., & Fazio, L. K. (2022, April 21). Does Wording Matter? Examining the Effect of Phrasing on Memory for Negated Political Fact Checks. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/mac0000022

Does Wording Matter? Examining the Effect of Phrasing on Memory for Negated Political Fact Checks

Schema-plus-tag Model and Fact Checking

Software used to flag fake news, which is often detected either by independent fact-checkers or crowdsourcing algorithms because of the fact the manually flagging fake news can be difficult.

Fact Checking Flags

Criteria for Evaluating the Truth of a Message

Overall, fact-checking has been found to positively influence beliefs. Although, there are differences in effectiveness depending on the type of fact-checking message, pre-existing beliefs, and inclusion of visual elements. 

Effectiveness of Fact-Checking

Individuals often only share fact-checks online when they align with their political views or other pre-existing beliefs.

The Partisanship of Sharing Fact-Checks

Fact-checking is not scalable as it requires substantial time and effort, warnings are only put on blantly false news, and it often fails to reach the intended audience. 

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