How People Process Different Types of Health Misinformation: Roles of Content Falsity and Evidence Type

ABSTRACT

Emerging communication technologies have seen the proliferation of misleading claims, untruthful narratives, and conspiracies. To understand how people perceive and act on different types of misinformation, this study examines how health misinformation varying in falsity (fabrication versus misuse) and evidence type (statistical versus narrative) affects sharing and verification intentions. Using COVID-19 vaccines as cases, the results from an online experiment showed that misused misinformation was perceived as less false than fabricated misinformation and resulted in higher sharing intentions for the issue of vaccine efficacy. Misinformation with narrative evidence, as compared to that with statistical evidence, was perceived as less false and led to lower verification intentions. These findings can be explained by psychological processes such as counterarguing and narrative engagement. Our results can help practitioners develop dedicated misinformation literacy programs.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2023.2184452

Notes

1. In the pilot study, participants were exposed to both issues with a randomized sequence. For each issue, participants were randomly assigned to one of the four message conditions. The manipulation of evidence type was successful for both issues, as the presumed statistical evidence was perceived as more statistical, t(77) = 1.81, p = .037, whereas the presumed narrative evidence was perceived as more personal, t(77) = −7.43, p < .001.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.