Media literacy tips promoting reliable news improve discernment and enhance trust in traditional media.

Media literacy tips typically encourage people to be skeptical of the news despite the small prevalence of false news in Western democracies. Would such tips be effective if they promoted trust in true news instead? A pre-registered experiment (N = 3919, US) showed that Skepticism-enhancing tips, Trust-inducing tips, and a mix of both tips, increased participants' sharing and accuracy discernment. The Trust-inducing tips boosted true news sharing and acceptance, the Skepticism-enhancing tips hindered false news sharing and acceptance, while the Mixed tips did both.

Prominent misinformation interventions reduce misperceptions but increase scepticism.

Current interventions to combat misinformation, including fact-checking, media literacy tips and media coverage of misinformation, may have unintended consequences for democracy. We propose that these interventions may increase scepticism towards all information, including accurate information. Across three online survey experiments in three diverse countries (the United States, Poland and Hong Kong; total n = 6,127), we tested the negative spillover effects of existing strategies and compared them with three alternative interventions against misinformation.

Tokenization of social media engagements increases the sharing of false (and other) news but penalization moderates it.

Some major social media companies are announcing plans to tokenize user engagements, derived from blockchain-based decentralized social media. This would bring financial and reputational incentives for engagement, which might lead users to post more objectionable content. Previous research showed that financial or reputational incentives for accuracy decrease the willingness to share misinformation.