from Massachusetts Institute of Technology
In this social media age, a great deal of information gets shared. Unfortunately, some of it is misinformation. A study from Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers a quick exercise to help reduce the problem of misleading information, especially in the Covid 19 pandemic. When study participants were asked to rate the accuracy of a single non-Covid-19 story, they tended to view Covid-19 stories with a more critical eye and more consideration of the accuracy of news they shared on social media. MIT professor David Rand says part of the misinformation issue on social media comes reposting an article to see how many likes one gets, without properly digesting the contents. That, he says, is different from “How true is this?” before reposting.