Fake news : what is its impact? can we do something about it?

Abstract

The rise of fake news led to widespread public concerns based on claims that it affects behaviors. Nevertheless, the evidence of the impact of fake news on behaviors is scarce and inconclusive, and there is no consensus on how to deal with the potential negative effects. In this paper we conduct a survey experiment to evaluate the impact of a fake news article concerning environmental activism. Additionally, the effect of a fact-checking article correcting the fake news story is also evaluated. The measured outcomes include beliefs and pro-environmental preferences and behaviors. The treated participants were randomly assigned to either read an extract of the fake news article or of the correction article. The remaining participants conform the control group. We find clear impacts on beliefs: the fake news article increases misperceptions while the correction reduces them. However, our results show small to null effects of both treatments on pro-environmental preferences and behaviors.