Poor quality results on search engines contribute to misinformation: study
The study was conducted by a research team from the University of Central Florida, New York University and Stanford University, USA.
A study found that people who conducted online searches to verify the veracity of a piece of potential misinformation ended up believing it because of “poor quality results” from search engines.
The findings, researchers say, highlight the need for online search engines to address the challenge posed by the appearance of non-credible information at the top of search results.
The study, conducted by a research team from the University of Central Florida, New York University and Stanford University, US, aimed to understand the impact of search results generated when people used search engines to assess the veracity of news.
The findings, published in the journal Nature, highlight the need for media literacy programs to base recommendations on empirically tested interventions and for search engines to invest in solutions to the challenges identified in this research.
“Our research shows that searching for news online increases belief in highly popular misinformation—and by remarkable amounts,” said study author Zeve Sanderson, founder and executive director of the New York Center for Social Media and Politics (CSMaP). University.
The researchers evaluated people's behavior after reading the latest and older news articles from a few months ago.
The dataset contained a combination of news articles with misleading or false information and verified news on a topic with significant news coverage, such as Covid-19.
The team included “false popular articles” about Covid-19 vaccines, Trump's impeachment and climate events, they said.
They found that users who conducted online searches to assess the veracity of news articles, especially those containing misleading or false information, were more likely to ultimately believe them when search engines showed “poor quality results.”
The researchers also found that this happened both shortly after the article's publication and months later, suggesting that the passage of time and the apparent opportunities for fact-checks to infiltrate the information ecosystem are increasing the disinformation-creating impact of online search have not reduced.
Furthermore, in one of five studies that assessed the impact of search result quality on believing or disbelieving misinformation, researchers found that online users exposed to “low-quality” search results were more likely to believe the falsehoods. .
“This highlights the danger that 'data voids' – areas of the information ecosystem dominated by news and information of low quality, or even outright false – can play an important role in the online search process, leading to low return of credible information or, more alarming, the appearance of non-credible information at the top of search results,” said lead author Kevin Aslett, an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
First print: December 24, 2023 | 8:26 PM IST