Labelling Trump's lies as 'disputed' on X makes supporters believe them more, study finds

[Eugene]

Related: Trump, Twitter, and truth judgments: The effects of “disputed” tags and political knowledge on the judged truthfulness of election misinformation (Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review)

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Source: The Guardian

Labelling Trump’s lies as ‘disputed’ on X makes supporters believe them more, study finds

Study says tagging posts with false claims on election fraud may make Trump voters more likely to think they’re true

Nick Robins-Early
Fri 20 Sep 2024 11.00 BST
Last modified on Fri 20 Sep 2024 11.02 BST

Labelling tweets featuring false claims about election fraud as “disputed” does little to nothing to change Trump voters’ pre-existing beliefs, and it may make them more likely to believe the lies, according to a new study.

The study, authored by John Blanchard, an assistant professor from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and Catherine Norris, an associate professor from Swarthmore College, looked at data from a sampling of 1,072 Americans surveyed in December of 2020. The researchers published a peer-reviewed paper on their findings this month in the Harvard Kennedy School’s Misinformation Review.

“These ‘disputed’ tags are meant to alert a reader to false/misinformation, so it’s shocking to find that they may have the opposite effect,” Norris said.

Participants were shown four tweets from Donald Trump that made false claims about election fraud and told to rank them from one to seven based on their truthfulness. A control group saw the tweets without “disputed” tags; the experimental group viewed them with the label. Before and after seeing the tweets, the subjects were also asked to rank their views on election fraud overall.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/sep/20/trump-tweets-false-label-credibility-supporters

[Rustynaerduwell]

1. And "There is no credible evidence of..."

is all the proof they need.

[Solly Mack]

2. Try tagging his lies with the word "Lie".

Disputed just sounds like some people think one thing and other people think something else. They don't agree with each other, so there is a dispute. That it is all up for debate.

Facts are not up for debate. A fact is a fact.

Call the man's lies what they factually are - lies.

Sure, true believers are going to put it down to the press being mean to Trump and they will always buy into Trump's lies, but calling a lie a lie makes it clear-cut that there is no dispute.