Checking and Sharing Alt-Facts
Journal article: During the 2019 European elections campaign, we exposed a random sample of French voting-age Facebook users to false statements by a far-right populist party. A randomly selected subgroup was also presented with fact-checking of these statements; another subgroup was offered a choice of whether to view the fact-checking. Participants could then share these statements on their Facebook pages. We show that (i) both imposed and voluntary fact-checking reduce sharing of false statements by about 45 percent, (ii) the size of the effect is similar between imposed and voluntary fact-checking, and (iii) each additional click required to share false statements sub stantially reduces sharing. (JEL D72, D81, D91)
Author(s)
Emeric Henry, Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, Sergei Guriev
Journal
- American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
Date of publication
- 2022
Keywords JEL
Pages
- 55-86
URL of the HAL notice
Version
- 1
Volume
- 14