Re-designing Social Media to Promote User Correction of Misinformation: Experimenting With Two Novel Techniques and Their Interplay with News Importance.

Abstract

A previous co-design research study proposed various user interface designs (UIDs) aimed at motivating users to engage in corrective actions and challenge others who post misinformation. This paper assesses the effectiveness of two such UIDs in promoting user correction, compared to the existing designs of mainstream social media platforms. The UIDs are “privately challenge toggle” (enabling an easy switch to private conversation mode with the misinformation poster) and “discuss section” (a dedicated thread for arguments to avoid cluttering the main comment box). Additionally, the study considers the perceived importance of the misinformation content as a variable to be accounted for. An online within-subject vignette experimental study with 306 UK Facebook users (111 male, 194 female and 1 non-binary) compared the proposed designs to the existing one, focusing on usability parameters such as effectiveness, acceptability, and comfort. Results indicate that participants rated usability of both proposed UIDs favorably compared to the existing design. A two-way repeated measures ANOVA exploring the impact of the interaction between the UIDs and content importance on the likelihood of engaging in user correction revealed a significant interaction: when the content is not important, the “privately challenge toggle” is more effective than the existing design. Conversely, when the content is important, users are more inclined to challenge misinformation using the existing design rather than the “discuss section.” This research provides insights into re-designing social media to promote user correction and highlights the importance of considering both the suitability of the UIDs and the perceived importance of misinformation posts.