A new study by a group of researchers shows the opposite takes place: Searching to examine the truthfulness of false news articles really increases the probability of thinking misinformation.The findings, which will be released today (December 20) in the journal Nature, provide insights into the effect of search engines output on their users– a fairly under-studied area.Impact of Search Engines on User Beliefs”Our study reveals that the act of browsing online to evaluate news increases belief in extremely popular misinformation– and by notable amounts,” states Zeve Sanderson, founding executive director of New York Universitys Center for Social Media and Politics (CSMaP) and one of the papers authors.The reason for this result might be discussed by search-engine outputs– in the study, the scientists found that this phenomenon is concentrated amongst individuals for whom search engines return lower-quality information.”This points to the risk that data spaces– locations of the info environment that are controlled by low quality, or even outright incorrect, news and details– may be playing a substantial role in the online search procedure, leading to low return of credible info or, more worrying, the look of non-credible information at the top of search outcomes,” observes lead author Kevin Aslett, an assistant teacher at the University of Central Florida and a faculty research affiliate at CSMaP.Methodology and Focus of the Nature StudyIn the freshly released Nature research study, Aslett, Sanderson, and their associates studied the effect of using online search engines to examine incorrect or deceptive views– an approach motivated by technology business and federal government agencies, among others.To do so, they recruited participants through both Qualtrics and Amazons Mechanical Turk– tools frequently utilized in running behavioral science studies– for a series of 5 experiments and with the aim of assessing the effect of a typical habits: searching online to evaluate news (SOTEN). By gathering search results utilizing a customized web browser plug-in, the researchers could determine how the quality of these search results may impact users belief in the false information being evaluated.The research studys source trustworthiness scores were figured out by NewsGuard, a browser extension that rates news and other information websites in order to guide users in evaluating the reliability of the content they come across online.Conclusions and RecommendationsAcross the 5 studies, the authors discovered that the act of browsing online to assess news led to a statistically considerable increase in belief in false information.
