Given that most of the news consumed by the public comes from reliable sources, small increases in acceptance of reliable information improve the global information score more than bringing acceptance of misinformation to 0%

Research note: Fighting misinformation or fighting for information? Alberto Acerbi, Sacha Altay, Hugo Mercier. Jan 12 2022. https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/research-note-fighting-misinformation-or-fighting-for-information/

Abstract: A wealth of interventions have been devised to reduce belief in fake news or the tendency to share such news. By contrast, interventions aimed at increasing trust in reliable news sources have received less attention. 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.

Research Question: Given limited resources, should we focus our efforts on fighting the spread of misinformation or on supporting the acceptance of reliable information?

Summary: 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).

Our results suggest that more efforts should be devoted to improving acceptance of reliable information, relative to fighting misinformation.

More elaborate simulations will allow for finer-grained comparisons of interventions targeting misinformation vs. interventions targeting reliable information, by considering their broad impact on the informational environment.