People were led to believe misinformation due to poor quality online search results, according to a startling study.
According to a recent study, individuals who conducted online searches to fact-check potential misinformation ended up believing it instead, primarily because search engines provided them with unreliable and subpar information.
According to the researchers, the findings show that online search engines have to respond to the challenge caused by the appearance of implausible information above the search results.
The study, conducted by a research team at New York University, University of Central Florida, and Stanford University, aimed to understand the impact of the search results produced when people use search engines to evaluate the veracity of news.
The findings, published in the journal Nature, highlighted the need for media literacy programs that base recommendations on empirically tested interventions and search engines to invest in solutions to the challenges identified in this study.
“Our research shows that searching online to evaluate news increases belief in highly popular misinformation — and by a significant margin,” said study author Zeve Sanderson, founding director of New York University’s Center for Social Media and Policy (CSMaP).
The researchers evaluated people’s behavior after reading the latest and older news articles from a few months ago.
The data included a mix of news articles with misleading or incorrect information and verified news on a subject with a lot of coverage, such as Covid-19.
They said the team included “false popular articles” about Covid-19 vaccinations, the Trump impeachment process and climate events.
They found that users who conducted online searches to judge the veracity of news articles, particularly articles containing misleading or false information, were more likely to believe them when search engines displayed “poor quality results.”
The researchers also found that this occurred both shortly after the article was published and months later, suggesting that the passage of time and the apparent opportunity for fact-checkers to enter the information ecosystem did not reduce the misinformation effect of web search.
Furthermore, in one of five studies that assessed the effect of search result quality on belief or disbelief of false information, researchers found that online users exposed to “poor quality” search results were more likely to believe lies.
“This points to the danger that ‘data voids’ – areas of the information ecosystem dominated by low-quality or even completely false news and information – can affect the online search process, resulting in low credibility information or, more worryingly, implausible information appearing at the top of search results,” says lead author Kevin Aslett , assistant professor at the University of Central Florida.
