The spread of misinformation on social media platforms - a (meta) cognitive perspective

Today’s media world is centered on real-time sharing of information. With social media, everyone has a platform to express their views on current events, making information more accessible than ever before. Yet, there is a twist: Social media prioritize popularity over the chronological presentation or accuracy of information, driven by features designed to maximize user engagement. In the first part of the talk, we will discuss the effect of (a)chronological presentation. In a series of experiments, we investigated how two competing causal information (misleading and correct) encountered at different times during news reports affect people's memory of the described event. We found both a misleading post-event information effect (Experiment 1: correct first, misleading second) and a continued influence effect (Experiment 2: misleading first, correct second). The influence of the misleading information can be reduced if the two causes are put in direct relation (Experiment 3). In the second part of the talk, we will address factors contributing to sharing behavior. We will briefly present our ChirPing platform, which allows us to investigate how different platform features influence sharing behavior. We will then present results from two projects that focus on how knowledge about socially relevant topics as well as metacognitive abilities (insight into the accuracy of one’s knowledge) influence sharing behavior of (mis) information and manipulative information on social media.

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