Study finds labeling Trump's lies as “disputed” on X makes his followers believe them more | Technology
Labeling tweets containing false claims about election fraud as “disputed” does little or nothing to change Trump voters’ preexisting beliefs, and may make them more likely to believe the lies, a new study finds.
The study, authored by John Blanchard, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and Catherine Norris, an associate professor at Swarthmore College, analyzed data from a sample of 1,072 Americans surveyed in December 2020. The researchers published a peer-reviewed paper on their findings this month in the journal Harvard Kennedy School Disinformation Review.
“These ‘disputed’ labels are intended to alert the reader to false or misleading information, so it is surprising to discover that they can have the opposite effect,” Norris said.
Participants were shown four tweets from Donald Trump that contained false claims about election fraud and asked to rank them on a scale from one to seven based on their truthfulness. A control group viewed the tweets without the “disputed” label; the experimental group viewed them with the label. Before and after viewing the tweets, subjects were also asked to rate their opinions about election fraud in general.
The study found that Trump voters who were initially skeptical of claims of widespread fraud were more likely to rate the lies as true when a “disputed” label appeared next to Trump’s tweets. Meanwhile, the findings showed that Biden voters’ beliefs were largely unaffected by the “disputed” labels. Third-party voters or nonvoters were slightly less likely to believe the false claims after reading all four tweets with the labels.
Blanchard and Norris had expected in their study that the challenged labels would produce little change in Trump voters with high levels of political knowledge, given that previous research had shown that politically engaged people may discount corrective efforts in favor of their own counterarguments. The researchers did not predict the opposite possibility: correction as confirmation. The informed Trump voters surveyed were so resistant to corrections that the fact-checking labels actually reinforced their belief in misinformation.
“Surprisingly, those Trump voters with higher political knowledge actually strengthened their belief in election misinformation when exposed to controversial labels, compared to a control group without labels,” Blanchard said. “Rather than having no impact, the labels appeared to backfire, reinforcing misinformation among this group.”
Previous studies and Research by disinformation experts They have argued that directly challenging conspiracy theorists’ beliefs can backfire, leading them to either retreat or reaffirm their convictions. While Blanchard and Norris state in the study that their findings do not necessarily prove that this backfire effect is universal (since the sample size of Trump voters in the study was relatively low), they are more certain that challenging labels are less effective the more politically informed Trump voters become.
Social media platforms have been trying for years to create various kinds of labeling systems that would tell users when content contains false, misleading, or unverified claims. Previously, Twitter/X labeled some tweets with false information as “disputed,” a practice it has replaced in recent years with its “community notes” peer-review feature and a more lax attitude toward content moderation in general.
A broader question that misinformation researchers have sought to answer is whether labels and fact checks that attempt to debunk falsehoods are actually effective, and some studies have found that these warnings can have negative consequences. The field of research has implications for social media platforms, news outlets, and initiatives aimed at preventing misinformation, especially at a time when Political polarization is high And false claims of voter fraud are ubiquitous.
The authors assessed political knowledge by asking participants 10 questions to test their general understanding of American politics, such as: “What political office does John Roberts currently hold?”
One limitation of the study is the unique time frame in which it was conducted: the height of the 2020 election, when conservatives held more antagonistic views toward Twitter. Since the study was conducted, Twitter has not only gotten rid of “disputed” labels, but has undergone a broader shift in ownership, content moderation policy, and user attitudes. After Tesla CEO Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in 2022 and rebranded it X, the platform has been bringing far-right voices back to the platform, including Trump himself, and taken a right turn This has led conservatives to view it in more positive terms.
“We can’t pinpoint exactly why the contested labels backfired among Trump voters, but distrust of the platform may have played a role,” Blanchard said. “Given conservative distrust of Twitter at the time, it’s possible that Trump supporters saw the labels as a clear attempt to restrict their autonomy, prompting them to double down on misinformation.”
