When false information spreads online, moral outrage often acts as its jet fuel. A comprehensive new study reveals that content from unreliable sources is significantly more likely to provoke angry reactions – and those heated responses in turn make people more likely to share misinformation without fact-checking it first.
Published in Science | Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
A sweeping analysis of millions of social media posts has uncovered a troubling feedback loop between moral outrage and the spread of false information online. The research, published in Science by Killian L. McLoughlin and colleagues, demonstrates that misinformation sources consistently generate more angry reactions than reliable news sources – and that these emotional responses significantly increase how often such content gets shared.
The study’s data is striking: links from sources classified as misinformation were 8 times more likely to be flagged for fact-checking compared to trustworthy sources (0.65% vs. 0.08%). When those flagged links were fact-checked, those from misinformation sources were 5.8 times more likely to be rated as false compared to links from trustworthy sources.
The research team employed a multi-platform, multi-study approach to overcome the limitations of analyzing any single platform. They examined eight samples of observational data: four from Facebook and four from Twitter, spanning both the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections – periods when misinformation is known to have widely circulated.
On Facebook, the researchers analyzed the platform’s “Angry” reactions, while on Twitter they developed a Digital Outrage Classifier to measure moral outrage expression specifically. The findings were consistent across platforms: content from unreliable sources generated significantly more outraged responses than content from trustworthy sources.
The relationship between outrage and misinformation creates a concerning amplification cycle. The researchers conducted behavioral experiments in a simulated social media environment to demonstrate that news headlines that evoke outrage have a causal effect on sharing intentions. This suggests that emotional responses don’t just correlate with increased sharing – they help drive it.
Key Terms
- Moral Outrage: An emotional reaction combining anger and disgust in response to perceived violations of moral norms or values.
- Misinformation: False or misleading information, regardless of whether it was created and shared intentionally or unintentionally.
- Differential Privacy: A mathematical framework that allows sharing information about a dataset while withholding information about individuals within it.
Test Your Knowledge
1. What percentage of links from misinformation sources were flagged for fact-checking?
0.65% of links from misinformation sources were flagged for fact-checking, compared to 0.08% from trustworthy sources.
2. What two major time periods did the research focus on?
The research examined content from around the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections.
3. How did researchers measure outrage differently on Facebook versus Twitter?
On Facebook, they analyzed “Angry” reaction data, while on Twitter they used a Digital Outrage Classifier to measure moral outrage expression in responses.
4. What methodological approach did the researchers use to establish causation?
They conducted behavioral experiments in a simulated social media environment to test whether news headlines that evoke outrage have a causal effect on sharing intentions.
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