The ability to establish trust and protect credibility for the members of society as much as the politicians is becoming increasingly challenging. An important unexplored domain in this paradigm is the mitigation process for misinformation. Some earlier studies have shown that correcting misbeliefs is difficult (Nyhan and Reifler 2010; Arceneaux and Wielen 2017). People tend to create their echo chambers with self-confirming beliefs in service of their prior attitudes and preferences (Suhay and Erisen 2018). Similar studies on conspiracy beliefs have also shown various aspects of the issue, primarily its consequences and identity-driven precedents (Miller, Saunders, and Farhart 2016; Federico, Williams, and Vitriol 2018). Yet, while earlier studies have explored various aspects of the issue, behavioral correction mechanisms of misinformation have not been studied, especially in non-WEIRD environments (Turkey and South Korea in this project).

Nationally representative data (already) collected in the project’s first stage involving survey experiments unravels the mechanism of mitigating misinformation behavior. Until EPSA2025 we will conduct an experiment in a social media environment that will capture to what degree correction is possible and under what conditions.

This project is funded by TUBITAK (the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) and the South Korean National Research Foundation (NRF).