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64 Why People Believe Fake News

How Your Brain Tricks

You Into Believing Fake

News

Continued from Page 61

This is a tendency that propagandists have been
aware of forever. The difference is that it has
never been easier to get eyeballs on the message,
nor to get enemies of the message to help spread
it. The researchers who conducted the Pew poll
noted that one reason people knowingly share
made-up news is to “call out” the stories as fake.
That might make a post popular among like-
minded peers on social media, but it can also
help false claims sink into the collective
consciousness.
Academics are only beginning to grasp
all the ways our brains are shaped by the
Internet, a key reason that stopping the spread of
misinformation is so tricky. One attempt by
Facebook shows how introducing new signals
into this busy domain can backfire. With hopes
of curtailing junk news, the company started
attaching warnings to posts that contained visuals, says Wardle. But some photos are might learn from them?” Wineburg recalls
claims that fact-checkers had rated as false. But doctored, and other legitimate ones are put in thinking, sitting in the team’s office beneath a
a study found that this can make users more false contexts. On Twitter, people use the size of print of the Tabula Rogeriana, a medieval map
likely to believe any unflagged post. Tessa others’ followings as a proxy for reliability, yet that pictures the world in a way we now see as
Lyons-Laing, a product manager who works on millions of followers have been paid for (and an upside-down. Eventually, a cold email to an
Facebook’s News Feed, says the company toyed estimated 10% of “users” may be bots). In his office in New York revealed a promising model:
with the idea of alerting users to hoaxes that studies, Wineburg found that people of all ages professional fact-checkers.
were traveling around the web each day before were inclined to evaluate sources based on Fact-checkers, they found, didn’t fall
realizing that an “immunization approach” features like the site’s URL and graphic design, prey to the same missteps as other groups. When
might be counterproductive. “We’re really things that are easy to manipulate. presented with the American College of
trying to understand the problem and to be It makes sense that humans would glom Pediatricians task, for example, they almost
thoughtful about the research and therefore, in on to just about anything when they’re so worn immediately left the site and started opening
some cases, to move slower,” she says. out by the news. But when we resist snap new tabs to see what the wider web had to say
Part of the issue is that people are still judgments, we are harder to fool. “You just have about the organization. Wineburg has dubbed
relying on outdated shortcuts, the kind we were to stop and think,” Rand says of the experiments this lateral reading: if a person never leaves a
taught to use in a library. Take the professor in he has run on the subject. “All of the data we site–as the professor failed to do–they are
Wineburg’s study. A list of citations means one have collected suggests that’s the real problem. essentially wearing blinders. Fact-checkers not
thing when it appears in a book that has been It’s not that people are being super-biased and only zipped to additional sources, but also laid
vetted by a publisher, a fact-checker and a using their reasoning ability to trick themselves their references side by side, to better keep their
librarian. It means quite another on the Internet, into believing crazy stuff. It’s just that people bearings.
where everyone has access to a personal printing aren’t stopping. They’re rolling on.” In another test, the researchers asked
press. Newspapers used to physically separate That is, of course, the way social-media subjects to assess the website
hard news and commentary, so our minds could platforms have been designed. The endless feeds MinimumWage.com. In a few minutes’ time,
easily grasp what was what. But today two- and intermittent rewards are engineered to keep 100% of fact-checkers figured out that the site is
thirds of Americans get news from social media, you reading. And there are other environmental backed by a PR firm that also represents the
where posts from publishers get the same factors at play, like people’s ability to easily seek restaurant industry, a sector that generally
packaging as birthday greetings and rants. out information that confirms their beliefs. But opposes raising hourly pay. Only 60% of
Content that warrants an emotional response is Rand is not the only academic who believes that historians and 40% of Stanford students made
mixed with things that require deeper we can take a big bite out of errors if we slow the same discovery, often requiring a second
consideration. “It all looks identical,” says down. prompt to find out who was behind the site.
Harvard researcher Claire Wardle, “so our brain Wineburg, an 18-year veteran of Another tactic fact-checkers used that
has to work harder to make sense of those Stanford, works out of a small office in the others didn’t is what Wineburg calls “click
different types of information.” center of the palm-lined campus. His group’s restraint.” They would scan a whole page of
Instead of working harder, we often try specialty is developing curricula that teachers search results–maybe even two–before choosing
to outsource the job. Studies have shown that across the nation use to train kids in critical a path forward. “It’s the ability to stand back and
people assume that the higher something thinking. Now they’re trying to update those get a sense of the overall territory in which
appears in Google search results, the more lessons for life in a digital age. With the help of you’ve landed,” he says, “rather than
reliable it is. But Google’s algorithms are funding from Google, which has devoted $3 promiscuously clicking on the first thing.” This
surfacing content based on keywords, not truth. million to the digital-literacy project they are is important, because people or organizations
If you ask about using apricot seeds to cure part of, the researchers hope to deploy new rules with an agenda can game search results by
cancer, the tool will dutifully find pages of the road by next year, outlining techniques packing their sites with keywords, so that those
asserting that they work. “A search engine is a that anyone can use to draw better conclusions sites rise to the top and more objective
search engine,” says Richard Gingras, vice on the web. assessments get buried.
president of news at Google. “I don’t think His group doesn’t just come up with The lessons they’ve developed include
anyone really wants Google to be the arbiter of smart ideas; it tests them. But as they set out to such techniques and teach kids to always start
what is or is not acceptable expression.” develop these lessons, they struggled to find with the same question: Who is behind the
That’s just one example of how we need research about best practices. “Where are the information?
to retrain our brains. We’re also inclined to trust studies about what superstars do, so that we (Continued on Page 65)