Online Community-Led Dialogue Reduces Spread of Misinformation by 82%

Tales of Turning – an organisation which harnesses research, social media, and technology for good – partnered with Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub and the University of Zurich’s Department of Communication and Media Research (IKMZ) to conduct a digital field experiment focused on preventing mis- and disinformation during South Africa’s 2024 election period.

Election Mis- and Disinformation in South Africa’s Digital Sphere

The unchecked dissemination of misinformation and disinformation poses a threat to both the real and perceived legitimacy of democratic elections. Evidence of these potential harms can be seen in South Africa, where false news contributed to the 2021 riots and perpetuated rumors regarding the prominence of fraud during the 2024 General Elections.

Evidence from a Digital Field Experiment

This recent collaborative effort leveraged digital tools as a way to challenge mis- and disinformation. The research aimed to assess the impact of Tales of Turning’s digital dialogue facilitation methodology in a real-world setting, providing insights into where this approach is most effective. The work follows a series of laboratory studies, led by researchers at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, which showed the potential for dialogue facilitation teams to use standard truth queries (STQ) developed by Tales of Turning to mitigate the potential harms associated with online misinformation.

The results support the findings reported in prior research based on laboratory studies and survey experiments. Most notably, the recently released preprint shows that the intervention had a substantial effect on engagement, with posts assigned to receive comments seeing a 77% reduction in likes and 82% reduction in reposts. Critically, the effect of the intervention was dependent on its timing, with the impact largest when STQs were applied quickly.

“This collaboration represents one of the first digital field experiments to study the efficacy of a community-led intervention aimed at mitigating harms associated with delegitimizing election content”, says Morgan Wack, PhD, the lead investigator of the paper. “The results of the study provide preliminary evidence that truth queries could help address many of the real-world challenges facing traditional forms of debunking which often require professional fact-checkers or buy-in from social media platforms.”

Additional Context and Design Details

Tales of Turning uses data from public social media and insights from communities themselves to understand the root causes of conflict. This work helps foster an understanding of the dynamic and complex nature of conflicts in different contexts. Social media platforms not only provide organizations like Tales of Turning with large quantities of data to inform interventions; the prominence of these platforms also makes it possible to leverage them to help these interventions reach vulnerable populations at scale.

The study began a few weeks before the South African election on 29 May 2024 and continued after the elections. The research saw Tales of Turning’s digital dialogue facilitators tasked with identifying and responding to explicitly false and misleading information about the election’s processes, institutions, and outcomes.

This testing focused on the narrower truth queries, such as ‘Yiza nazo?’ (Tell me more), ‘Wena o tsebella kae?’ (How do you know this?), ‘Hoekom se jy so?’ (Why do you say that?) and ‘Is this true?’. The replies were chosen for this testing as they can be applied to a broad range of misinformation quickly and easily, making them well-suited to address large quantities of newly emerging misinformation.

Researchers then investigated how these replies impacted key outcomes of posts containing misinformation – such as sharing, engagement, and user replies, comparing the outcomes to equivalent posts identified that did not receive replies from the dialogue facilitators.

Join our webinar

Representatives from Tales of Turning and the University of Zurich are hosting a webinar on 13th November at 5pm (SAST) to share more about the digital dialogue facilitation methodology and the initial research results.

For more information, visit www.talesofturning.co.za and for media queries contact
talesofturning@gmail.com.

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Author: Agnes Matladi from Olivia Jones Communications on behalf of Tales of Turning.

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