Misinformation rules!? Could "group rules" reduce misinformation in online personal messaging?

Chadwick, Andrew, Hall, Natalie-Anne and Vaccari, Cristian 2023. Misinformation rules!? Could "group rules" reduce misinformation in online personal messaging? New Media and Society , 14614448231172964. 10.1177/14614448231172964

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Personal messaging platforms are hugely popular and often implicated in the spread of misinformation. We explore an unexamined practice on them: when users create “group rules” to prevent misinformation entering everyday interactions. Our data are a subset of in-depth interviews with 33 participants in a larger program of longitudinal qualitative fieldwork (N = 102) we conducted over 16 months. Participants could also donate examples of misinformation via our customized smartphone application. We find that some participants created group rules to mitigate what they saw as messaging’s harmful affordances. In the context of personalized trust relationships, these affordances were perceived as making it likely that misinformation would harm social ties. Rules reduce the vulnerability and can stimulate metacommunication that, over time, fosters norms of collective reflection and epistemic vigilance, although the impact differs subtly according to group size and membership. Subject to further exploration, group rulemaking could reduce the spread of online misinformation.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
ISSN:	1461-4448
Last Modified:	16 Dec 2024 12:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/172822

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item