Can Fighting Misinformation Have a Negative Spillover Effect? How Warnings for the Threat of Misinformation Can Decrease General News Credibility

Abstract

In the battle against misinformation, do negative spillover effects of communicative efforts intended to protect audiences from inaccurate information exist? Given the relatively limited prevalence of misinformation in people’s news diets, this study explores if the heightened salience of misinformation as a persistent societal threat can have an unintended spillover effect by decreasing the credibility of factually accurate news. Using an experimental design (N = 1305), we test whether credibility ratings of factually accurate news are subject to exposure to misinformation, corrective information, misinformation warnings, and news media literacy (NML) interventions relativizing the misinformation threat. Findings suggest that efforts like warning about the threat of misinformation can prime general distrust in authentic news, hinting toward a deception bias in the context of fear of misinformation being salient. Next, the successfulness of NML interventions is not straight forward if it comes to avoiding that the salience of misinformation distorts people’s creditability accuracy. We conclude that the threats of the misinformation order may not just be remedied by fighting false information, but also by reestablishing trust in legitimate news.