The Vaccine for Viral Misinformation

I consider myself to have average to above-average intelligence, as many people do. I am college educated—and am in fact a college professor—and I’ve devoted my life to the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge.

But even I can be easily duped by the internet. This past Halloween, a viral video of the Statue of Liberty wearing a ghost costume spread all over the internet. As a lover of Halloween and all things spooky, I immediately showed my husband, “We have to go see it!” He looked at me confused and said, “You know that’s just AI, right?”

Wrong. I did not know that. I totally believed it was real. And after getting over the disappointment of not getting to see a ghostified Lady Liberty, I had to get over the embarrassment of being so easily duped.

But honestly, it could happen to anyone these days (and I’m not just saying that to make myself feel better). Having the internet at our fingertips 24 hours a day can make news spread all over the world in a matter of days, hours, or even minutes, and that news doesn’t necessarily have to be real. On top of that, artificial intelligence has made deep fakes, which are practically indistinguishable from real photos or videos, possible and easier to generate than ever.

While the deep fakes and AI have added a whole new level to the spread of misinformation, fake news and conspiracy theories aren’t new. In fact, they are as old as written history itself.

For example, there were various conspiracy theories in ancient Rome about the death of the Roman Emperor Nero, who committed suicide in 68 A.D., but was rumored to have faked his death. Antisemitism has used elements of conspiracy theories since at least medieval times. And then there are modern-day conspiracy theories about UFOs and Area 51, the JFK assassination, 9/11, the moon landing, and the Illuminati.

What Makes Fake News Go Viral

How does false information spread, and why does it spread so fast? Researchers have been asking these questions for decades and have found some interesting and surprising things.

First, they found that false information becomes more believable every time you repeat it. And this is even the case when the person knows the truth first (Hasher et al., 1977). By hearing the same thing over and over again, the misinformation gets embedded in your memory, which makes it harder to overturn.

On top of that, “bad” news travels incredibly fast—much faster than “good” news. In one important study, researchers looked at how quickly information travels on Twitter via retweets. They concentrated on tracking all the verified true and false news stories that spread through Twitter between 2006 and 2017. What they found is jaw-dropping.

First, they found that fake news stories were 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than real news stories. Second, they found that it took real news stories 6 times as long to reach 1,500 people as fake ones (Vosoughi et al., 2018). This makes us all incredibly susceptible to believing fake news stories simply by the fact that we’re more likely to hear them, and we typically don’t hear them just once.

How to “Inoculate” Yourself Against Fake News

So, what do we do to protect ourselves from being duped? In his book, Foolproof, Sander van der Liden discusses what makes for spreadable fake news, and importantly, he gives us some clues about how to “inoculate” ourselves against it, and even fight it.

Luckily, fake news stories have some tell-tale signs. First, although they are often debunked pretty quickly, the creators of false information divert attention from the facts to the fact-checkers, attempting to discredit them.

Think about how the term “fake news” even became popular in the first place; it was a politician’s attempt to discredit mainstream media for debunking false statements. Now, “fake news” is used to discredit almost any kind of news story that doesn’t fit with someone’s worldview.

The second telltale sign is the use of emotion. Most conspiracy theories or misinformation engines use emotional manipulation to draw you in. In fact, van der Liden and his colleagues found that both tweets and Facebook posts that have emotion words in them significantly increase the probability that they will be shared (Van der Liden, 2023).

Relatedly, a third telltale sign is that many fake news stories are intended to cause polarization, or to push two sides (often the political left and right) farther apart. Sometimes they can use bots to post polarizing information, or by trolling other people’s posts to make it seem like the tensions between sides are bigger than they really are.

So the next time you’re wondering if something you read online is true, first fact-check it, and then do an internal check for some of these manipulation techniques. Ask yourself:

• Is the writer of this story or post trying to get me emotional or angry?
• Are they trying to make me dislike someone or some group?
• Are they providing proper evidence to back up their claims, or do they react to dissent by just trying to discredit the dissenters?

If the answer is yes to any of these, you might be the target of misinformation. The best thing you can do with these stories is not to spread them because, as we’ve established, they can spread like wildfire.

Unfortunately, it’s not easy to convince someone who believes some of these false narratives to change their mind, but stay calm, and, as van der Linden recommends, lead with simple facts, warn about the potential for misinformation, explain why the story is misleading, and then restate the facts, giving an alternative (factual) explanation.

People don’t like changing their minds about something unless there is a plausible alternative, so give them one: the truth. And try to keep it in mind yourself when you’re scrolling.