The Misinformation Review

The Misinformation Review is an open access publication from Harvard Kennedy School  focusing on - as you might expect - research related to misinformationhttps://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/. A recent example is:

Acerbi, A., Altay, S., & Mercier, H. (2022). Research note: Fighting misinformation or fighting for information?. Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-87 "In this article, we show that, given the very limited prevalence of misinformation (including fake news), interventions aimed at reducing acceptance or spread of such news are bound to have very small effects on the overall quality of the information environment, especially compared to interventions aimed at increasing trust in reliable news sources. To make this argument, we simulate the effect that such interventions have on a global information score, which increases when people accept reliable information and decreases when people accept misinformation" The article proposes a quantitative model which they use to argue their case. "To test the efficacy of various interventions aimed at improving the informational environment, we developed a model computing a global information score, which is the share of accepted pieces of reliable information minus the share of accepted pieces of misinformation. Simulations show that, given that most of the news consumed by the public comes from reliable sources, small increases in acceptance of reliable information (e.g., 1%) improve the global information score more than bringing acceptance of misinformation to 0%. This outcome is robust for a wide range of parameters and is also observed if acceptance of misinformation decreases trust in reliable information or increases the supply of misinformation (within plausible limits)."

Photo by Sheila Webber: Christmas tree for collection (the last un the series), January 2022