A team at George Washington University looked at the impact of fact-checking in Argentina, Nigeria, South Africa and the UK, and found little variation in their positive effects.
They also found no evidence of a “backfire” effect of fact-checking, said co-author of the study Thomas Wood.
“When we started doing misinformation work about five years ago, it was the consensus that correcting misinformation wasn’t just ineffective, but that it was aggravating the problem and making people more entrenched in their false beliefs,” he explained.
“We found no evidence of that in these four countries. What we did find was that fact-checking can be a very effective tool against misinformation.”
The researchers worked with fact-checking organisations in the four countries that are part of the International Fact-Checking Network, a body that promotes nonpartisan and transparent fact-checking.
They evaluated five fact-checks that were unique to each country and two...