Hostname: page-component-5b777bbd6c-skqgd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-06-21T22:53:21.110Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Educative Interventions to Combat Misinformation: Evidence from a Field Experiment in India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2021

SUMITRA BADRINATHAN Open the ORCID record for SUMITRA BADRINATHAN [Opens in a new window]
SUMITRA BADRINATHAN*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
*
Sumitra Badrinathan, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford, sumitra.badrinathan@politics.ox.ac.uk.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Misinformation makes democratic governance harder, especially in developing countries. Despite its real-world import, little is known about how to combat misinformation outside of the United States, particularly in places with low education, accelerating Internet access, and encrypted information sharing. This study uses a field experiment in India to test the efficacy of a pedagogical intervention on respondents’ ability to identify misinformation during the 2019 elections (N = 1,224). Treated respondents received hour-long in-person media literacy training in which enumerators discussed inoculation strategies, corrections, and the importance of verifying misinformation, all in a coherent learning module. Receiving this hour-long media literacy intervention did not significantly increase respondents’ ability to identify misinformation on average. However, treated respondents who support the ruling party became significantly less able to identify pro-attitudinal stories. These findings point to the resilience of misinformation in India and the presence of motivated reasoning in a traditionally nonideological party system.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 115 , Issue 4 , November 2021 , pp. 1325 - 1341
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Allcott, Hunt, and Gentzkow, Matthew. 2017. “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 31 (2): 211–36.Google Scholar
Badrinathan, Sumitra. 2021. “Replication Data for: Educative Interventions to Combat Misinformation: Evidence From a Field Experiment in India.” Harvard Dataverse. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ITKNX5.Google Scholar
Bowles, Jeremy, Larreguy, Horacio, and Liu, Shelley. 2020. “Countering Misinformation via WhatsApp: Preliminary Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic in Zimbabwe.” PloS One 15 (10): e0240005.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brashier, Nadia M., and Schacter, Daniel L.. 2020. “Aging in an Era of Fake News.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 29 (3): 316–23.Google Scholar
Brashier, Nadia M., and Marsh, Elizabeth J.. 2020. “Judging Truth.” Annual Review of Psychology 71: 499–515.Google Scholar
Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E.. 1960. The American Voter. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Chan, Man-pui Sally, Jones, Christopher R., Jamieson, Kathleen Hall, and Albarracín, Dolores. 2017. “Debunking: A Meta-analysis of the Psychological Efficacy of Messages Countering Misinformation.” Psychological Science 28 (11): 1531–46.Google Scholar
Chandra, Kanchan. 2007. Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Headcounts in India. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chhibber, Pradeep, Jensenius, Francesca Refsum, and Suryanarayan, Pavithra. 2014. “Party Organization and Party Proliferation in India.” Party Politics 20 (4): 489–505.Google Scholar
Chhibber, Pradeep, and Verma, Rahul. 2018. Ideology and Identity: The Changing Party Systems of India. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Compton, Josh. 2013. “Inoculation Theory.” In The Sage Handbook of Persuasion: Developments in Theory and Practice, eds. Dillard, James Price and Shen, Lijiang, 220–36. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Cook, John, Lewandowsky, Stephan, and Ullrich, K. H. Ecker. 2017. “Neutralizing Misinformation through Inoculation: Exposing Misleading Argumentation Techniques Reduces Their Influence.” PloS One 12 (5): e0175799.Google Scholar
Devlin, Kat, and Johnson, Courtney. 2019. “Indian Elections Nearing Amid Frustration with Politics, Concerns about Misinformation.” Pew Research Center, March 25. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/03/25/indian-elections-nearing-amid-frustration-with-politics-concerns-about-misinformation/.Google Scholar
Ecker, Ullrich K. H., and Ang, Li Chang. 2019. “Political Attitudes and the Processing of Misinformation Corrections.” Political Psychology 40 (2): 241–60.Google Scholar
Egelhofer, Jana Laura, and Lecheler, Sophie. 2019. “Fake News as a Two-dimensional Phenomenon: A Framework and Research Agenda.” Annals of the International Communication Association 43 (2): 97–116.Google Scholar
Faris, Robert, Roberts, Hal, Etling, Bruce, Bourassa, Nikki, Zuckerman, Ethan, and Benkler, Yochai. 2017. “Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 US Presidential Election.” Berkman Klein Center Research Publication 6. https://bit.ly/3lmlcOl.Google Scholar
Farkas, Johan, and Schou, Jannick. 2018. “Fake News as a Floating Signifier: Hegemony, Antagonism and the Politics of Falsehood.” Javnost-The Public 25 (3): 298–314.Google Scholar
Flynn, D.J., Nyhan, Brendan, and Reifler, Jason. 2017. “The Nature and Origins of Misperceptions: Understanding False and Unsupported Beliefs about Politics.” Political Psychology 38: 127–50.Google Scholar
Fridkin, Kim, Kenney, Patrick J., and Wintersieck, Amanda. 2015. “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire: How Fact-checking Influences Citizens’ Reactions to Negative Advertising.” Political Communication 32 (1): 127–51.Google Scholar
Garimella, Kiran, and Eckles, Dean. 2020. “Images and Misinformation in Political Groups: Evidence from WhatsApp in India.” Working Paper. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.09784.pdf.Google Scholar
Gentzkow, Matthew, Shapiro, Jesse M., and Stone, Daniel F.. 2015. “Media Bias in the Marketplace: Theory.” In Handbook of Media Economics, eds. Anderson, Simon P., Waldfogel, Joel, and Strömberg, David, 623–46. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Gerber, Alan S., and Huber, Gregory A.. 2009. “Partisanship and Economic Behavior: Do Partisan Differences in Economic Forecasts Predict Real Economic Behavior?” American Political Science Review 103 (3): 407–26.Google Scholar
Giner-Sorolla, Roger, and Chaiken, Sheily. 1997. “Selective Use of Heuristic and Systematic Processing under Defense Motivation.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23 (1): 84–97.Google Scholar
Grinberg, Nir, Joseph, Kenneth, Friedland, Lisa, Swire-Thompson, Briony, and Lazer, David. 2019. “Fake News on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.” Science 363 (6425): 374–78.Google Scholar
Groenendyk, Eric, and Krupnikov, Yanna. 2021. “What Motivates Reasoning? A Theory of Goal-dependent Political Evaluation.” American Journal of Political Science 65 (1): 180–96.Google Scholar
Guess, Andrew, Nyhan, Brendan, and Reifler, Jason. 2018. “Selective Exposure to Misinformation: Evidence from the Consumption of Fake News During the 2016 US Presidential Campaigns” Working Paper. http://www.ask-force.org/web/Fundamentalists/Guess-Selective-Exposure-to-Misinformation-Evidence-Presidential-Campaign-2018.pdf.Google Scholar
Guess, Andrew M., and Lyons, Benjamin A.. 2020. “Misinformation, Disinformation, and Online Propaganda.” In Social Media and Democracy: The State of the Field, Prospects for Reform, eds. Persily, Nathaniel and Tucker, Joshua A., 10–33. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Guess, Andrew M., Lerner, Michael, Lyons, Benjamin, Montgomery, Jacob M., Nyhan, Brendan, Reifler, Jason, and Sircar, Neelanjan. 2020. “A Digital Media Literacy Intervention Increases Discernment between Mainstream and False News in the United States and India.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117 (27): 15536–45.Google Scholar
Hameleers, Michael. 2020. “Separating Truth from Lies: Comparing the Effects of News Media Literacy Interventions and Fact-checkers in Response to Political Misinformation in the US and Netherlands.” Information, Communication & Society 37 (2): 1–17.Google Scholar
Heath, Oliver. 2005. “Party Systems, Political Cleavages and Electoral Volatility in India: A State-wise Analysis, 1998–1999.” Electoral Studies 24 (2): 177–99.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Jennifer L., and Einstein, Katherine Levine. 2015. Do Facts Matter? Information and Misinformation in American Politics. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Jardina, Ashley, and Traugott, Michael. 2019. “The Genesis of the Birther Rumor: Partisanship, Racial Attitudes, and Political Knowledge.” Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics 4 (1): 60–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jerit, Jennifer, and Barabas, Jason. 2012. “Partisan Perceptual Bias and the Information Environment.” The Journal of Politics 74 (3): 672–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jerit, Jennifer, Barabas, Jason, and Clifford, Scott. 2013. “Comparing Contemporaneous Laboratory and Field Experiments on Media Effects.” Public Opinion Quarterly 77 (1): 256–82.Google Scholar
Jones-Jang, S. Mo, Mortensen, Tara, and Liu, Jingjing. 2019. “Does Media Literacy Help Identification of Fake News? Information Literacy Helps, but other Literacies Don’t.” American Behavioral Scientist 65 (2): 371–88.Google Scholar
Kahan, Dan M., Peters, Ellen, Dawson, Erica Cantrell, and Slovic, Paul. 2017. “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-government.” Behavioural Public Policy 1 (1): 54–86.Google Scholar
Kahne, Joseph, and Bowyer, Benjamin. 2017. “Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age: Confronting the Challenges of Motivated Reasoning and Misinformation.” American Educational Research Journal 54 (1): 3–34.Google Scholar
Kaka, Noshir, Madgavkar, Anu, Kshirsagar, Alok, Gupta, Rajat, Manyika, James, Bahl, Kushe, and Gupta, Shishir. 2019. “Digital India: Technology to Transform a Connected Nation.” McKinsey Global Institute, March 27. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/digital-india-technology-to-transform-a-connected-nation.Google Scholar
Kitschelt, Herbert, and Wilkinson, Steven I.. 2007. Patrons, Clients and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kumar, Sanjay, and Kumar, Pranav. 2018. “How Widespread is WhatsApp’s Usage in India?” Live Mint, July 18. https://www.livemint.com/Technology/O6DLmIibCCV5luEG9XuJWL/How-widespread-is-WhatsApps-usage-in-India.html.Google Scholar
Li, Jianing. 2020. “Toward a Research Agenda on Political Misinformation and Corrective Information.” Political Communication 37 (1): 125–35.Google Scholar
Li, Jianing, and Wagner, Michael W.. 2020. “The Value of Not Knowing: Partisan Cue-taking and Belief Updating of the Uninformed, the Ambiguous, and the Misinformed.” Journal of Communication 70 (5): 646–69.Google Scholar
Lodge, Milton, and Taber, Charles S.. 2013. The Rationalizing Voter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lupu, Noam, and Michelitch, Kristin. 2018. “Advances in Survey Methods for the Developing World.” Annual Review of Political Science 21: 195–214.Google Scholar
Mathur, Nandita. 2019. “India’s Internet Base Crosses 500 Million Mark, Driven by Rural India.” Live Mint, March 11. https://www.livemint.com/industry/telecom/internet-users-exceed-500-million-rural-india-driving-growth-report-1552300847307.html.Google Scholar
McGoey, Linsey. 2012. “The Logic of Strategic Ignorance.” The British Journal of Sociology 63 (3): 553–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Michelitch, Kristin, and Utych, Stephen. 2018. “Electoral Cycle Fluctuations in Partisanship: Global Evidence from Eighty-six Countries.” The Journal of Politics 80 (2): 412–27.Google Scholar
Mosseri, Adam. 2017. “A New Educational Tool against Misinformation.” Facebook, April 6. https://about.fb.com/news/2017/04/a-new-educational-tool-against-misinformation/.Google Scholar
Mujani, Saiful, and Kuipers, Nicholas. 2020. “Who Believed Misinformation during the 2019 Indonesian Election?” Asian Survey 60 (6): 1029–43.Google Scholar
Mullinix, Kevin J. 2018. “Civic Duty and Political Preference Formation.” Political Research Quarterly 71 (1): 199–214.Google Scholar
Munger, Kevin, Luca, Mario, Nagler, Jonathan, and Tucker, Joshua. 2018. “Everyone on Mechanical Turk is above a Threshold of Digital Literacy: Sampling Strategies for Studying Digital Media Effects.” Working Paper. https://csdp.princeton.edu/sites/csdp/files/media/munger_mturk_digital_literacy_note_0.pdf.Google Scholar
Nelson, Jacob L., and Taneja, Harsh. 2018. “The Small, Disloyal Fake News Audience: The Role of Audience Availability in Fake News Consumption.” New Media & Society 20 (10): 3720–37.Google Scholar
Nyhan, Brendan, Porter, Ethan, Reifler, Jason, and Wood, Thomas. 2019. “Taking Fact-checks Literally but Not Seriously? The Effects of Journalistic Fact-checking on Factual Beliefs and Candidate Favorability.” Political Behavior (42): 939–60.Google Scholar
Nyhan, Brendan, and Reifler, Jason. 2010. “When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions.” Political Behavior 32 (2): 303–30.Google Scholar
Pennycook, Gordon, Cannon, Tyrone D., and Rand, David G.. 2018. “Prior Exposure Increases Perceived Accuracy of Fake News.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 147 (12): 1865–80.Google Scholar
Perrigo, Billy. 2019. “How Volunteers for India’s Ruling Party Are Using WhatsApp to Fuel Fake News Ahead of Elections.” TIME, January 25. https://time.com/5512032/whatsapp-india-election-2019/.Google Scholar
Poonam, Snigdha, and Bansal, Samarth. 2019. “Misinformation Is Endangering India’s Election.” The Atlantic, April 1. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/04/india-misinformation-election-fake-news/586123/.Google Scholar
Prior, Markus, Sood, Gaurav, and Khanna, Kabir. 2015. “You Cannot Be Serious: The Impact of Accuracy Incentives on Partisan Bias in Reports of Economic Perceptions.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 10 (4): 489–518.Google Scholar
Rossini, Patrícia, Stromer-Galley, Jennifer, Baptista, Erica Anita, and Oliveira, Vanessa Veiga de. 2020. “Dysfunctional Information Sharing on Whatsapp and Facebook: The Role of Political Talk, Cross-cutting Exposure and Social Corrections.” New Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820928059.Google Scholar
Sahoo, Niranjan. 2020. “Mounting Majoritarianism and Political Polarization in India.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, August 18. https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/08/18/mounting-majoritarianism-and-political-polarization-in-india-pub-82434.Google Scholar
Sherman, David K., and Cohen, Geoffrey L.. 2006. “The Psychology of Self-defense: Self-affirmation Theory.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38: 183–242.Google Scholar
Silver, Laura, and Smith, Aaron. 2019. “In Some Countries, Many Use the Internet without Realizing It.” Pew Research Center, May 2. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/02/in-some-countries-many-use-the-internet-without-realizing-it/.Google Scholar
Singh, Shivam Shankar. 2019. How to Win an Indian Election: What Political Parties Don’t Want You to Know. Gurgaon: Penguin Random House.Google Scholar
Sircar, Neelanjan. 2020. “The Politics of Vishwas: Political Mobilization in the 2019 National Election.” Contemporary South Asia 28 (2): 178–94.Google Scholar
Smith, Jeff, Jackson, Grace, and Raj, Seetha. 2017. “Designing against Misinformation.” Medium, December 20. https://medium.com/facebook-design/designing-against-misinformation-e5846b3aa1e2.Google Scholar
Taber, Charles S., and Lodge, Milton. 2006. “Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs.” American Journal of Political Science 50 (3): 755–69.Google Scholar
Edson, C. Tandoc Jr., Lim, Zheng Wei, and Ling, Richard. 2018. “Defining “Fake News”: A Typology of Scholarly Definitions.” Digital Journalism 6 (2): 137–53.Google Scholar
Thachil, Tariq. 2014. “Elite Parties and Poor Voters: Theory and Evidence from India.” American Political Science Review 108 (2): 454–77.Google Scholar
Tucker, Joshua A., Guess, Andrew, Barberá, Pablo, Vaccari, Cristian, Siegel, Alexandra, Sanovich, Sergey, Stukal, Denis, et al. 2018. Social Media, Political Polarization, and Political Disinformation: A Review of the Scientific Literature. Meno Park, CA: Hewlett Foundation. https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/87402/1/Social-Media-Political-Polarization-and-Political-Disinformation-Literature-Review.pdf.Google Scholar
Tully, Melissa, and Vraga, Emily K.. 2017. “Effectiveness of a News Media Literacy Advertisement in Partisan versus Nonpartisan Online Media Contexts.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 61 (1): 144–62.Google Scholar
Tully, Melissa, Vraga, Emily K., and Bode, Leticia. 2020. “Designing and Testing News Literacy Messages for Social Media.” Mass Communication and Society 23 (1): 22–46.Google Scholar
Uttam, Kumar. 2018. “For PM Modi’s 2019 Campaign, BJP readies its WhatsApp Plan.” Hindustan Times, September 29. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/bjp-plans-a-whatsapp-campaign-for-2019-lok-sabha-election/story-lHQBYbxwXHaChc7Akk6hcI.html.Google Scholar
Valenzuela, Sebastián, Halpern, Daniel, Katz, James E., and Miranda, Juan Pablo. 2019. “The Paradox of Participation versus Misinformation: Social Media, Political Engagement, and the Spread of Misinformation.” Digital Journalism 7 (6): 802–23.Google Scholar
Vraga, Emily K., Bode, Leticia, and Tully, Melissa. 2020. “Creating News Literacy Messages to Enhance Expert Corrections of Misinformation on Twitter.” Communication Research. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0093650219898094.Google Scholar
Vraga, Emily K., and Tully, Melissa. 2021. “News Literacy, Social Media Behaviors, and Skepticism toward Information on Social Media.” Information, Communication & Society 24 (2): 150–66.Google Scholar
Westwood, Sean J., Iyengar, Shanto, Walgrave, Stefaan, Leonisio, Rafael, Miller, Luis, and Strijbis, Oliver. 2018. “The Tie That Divides: Cross-national Evidence of the Primacy of Partyism.” European Journal of Political Research 57 (2): 333–54.Google Scholar
Wineburg, Sam, and McGrew, Sarah. 2019. “Lateral Reading and the Nature of Expertise: Reading Less and Learning More When Evaluating Digital Information.” Teachers College Record 121 (11): n11.Google Scholar
The Wire Staff. 2018. “Real or Fake, We Can Make Any Message Go Viral: Amit Shah to BJP Social Media Volunteers.” The Wire, September 26. https://thewire.in/politics/amit-shah-bjp-fake-social-media-messages.Google Scholar
Wittenberg, Chloe, and Berinsky, Adam J.. 2020. “Misinformation and Its Correction.” In Social Media and Democracy: The State of the Field, Prospects for Reform, eds. Persily, Nathaniel and Tucker, Joshua A. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Thomas, and Porter, Ethan. 2019. “The Elusive Backfire Effect: Mass Attitudes’ Steadfast Factual Adherence.” Political Behavior 41 (1): 135–63.Google Scholar
Ziegfeld, Adam. 2016. Why Regional Parties?: Clientelism, Elites, and the Indian Party System. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Badrinathan Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ITKNX5
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Badrinathan supplementary material

Online Appendices

Download Badrinathan supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 3.5 MB
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.