Battling the coronavirus ‘infodemic’ among social media users in Kenya and Nigeria

• Published in: Nature human behaviour Vol. 8; no. 5; pp. 823 - 834
• Main Authors: Offer-Westort, Molly, Rosenzweig, Leah R., Athey, Susan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.05.2024; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 4014/4013; 4014/4045; 706/134; Accuracy; Adaptive designs; Adult; Behavioral Sciences; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Communication; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; COVID-19 - prevention & control; Experimental Psychology; False information; Female; Humans; Information Dissemination - methods; Intention; Intervention; Kenya; Life Sciences; Male; Microeconomics; Misinformation; Neurosciences; Nigeria; Pandemics; Personality and Social Psychology; Social Media; Social networks; Tactics; Young Adult; Nigeria; Kenya
• ISSN: 2397-3374; 2397-3374
• DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01810-7

How can we induce social media users to be discerning when sharing information during a pandemic? An experiment on Facebook Messenger with users from Kenya ( n  = 7,498) and Nigeria ( n  = 7,794) tested interventions designed to decrease intentions to share COVID-19 misinformation without decreasing intentions to share factual posts. The initial stage of the study incorporated: (1) a factorial design with 40 intervention combinations; and (2) a contextual adaptive design, increasing the probability of assignment to treatments that worked better for previous subjects with similar characteristics. The second stage evaluated the best-performing treatments and a targeted treatment assignment policy estimated from the data. We precisely estimate null effects from warning flags and related article suggestions, tactics used by social media platforms. However, nudges to consider the accuracy of information reduced misinformation sharing relative to control by 4.9% (estimate = −2.3 percentage points, 95% CI = [−4.2, −0.35]). Such low-cost scalable interventions may improve the quality of information circulating online. Which interventions limit the spread of COVID-19 misinformation online? In an experiment on Facebook Messenger in Kenya and Nigeria, nudges to consider an information’s accuracy worked best.