What kinds of political content thrive on TikTok during an election year? Our analysis of 51,680 political videos from the 2024 U.S. presidential cycle reveals that toxic and partisan content consistently attracts more user engagement—despite ongoing moderation efforts. Posts about immigration and election fraud, in particular, draw high levels of toxicity and attention. While Republican-leaning| Misinformation Review
Publishing high quality interdisciplinary research that examines misinformation from different perspectives, from its prevalence and impact to the effectiveness of possible interventions.| Misinformation Review
A significant body of research is dedicated to developing language models that can detect various types of online abuse, for example, hate speech, cyberbullying. However, there is a disconnect between platform policies, which often consider the author’s intention as a criterion for content moderation, and the current capabilities of detection models, which typically lack efforts to capture intent. The post The unappreciated role of intent in algorithmic moderation of abusive content on soci...| HKS Misinformation Review
How effective are user corrections in combatting misinformation on social media, and does adding a link to a fact check improve their effectiveness? We conducted a pre-registered online experiment on representative samples of the online population in Brazil, India, and the United Kingdom (N participants = 3,000, N observations = 24,000). We found that in| Misinformation Review
Misinformation research often draws optimistic conclusions, with fact-checking, for example, being established as an effective means of reducing false beliefs. However, it rarely considers the details of socioeconomic disparities that often shape who is most vulnerable to science misinformation. Historical and systemic inequalities have fostered mistrust in institutions, limiting access to credible information, for example, when Black patients distrust public health guidance due to past medic...| HKS Misinformation Review
Following the leadership transition on October 27, 2022, Twitter/X underwent a notable change in platform governance. This study investigates how these changes influenced information quality for registered U.S. voters and the platform more broadly. We address this question by analyzing two complementary datasets—a Twitter panel and a Decahose sample. Our findings reveal a subtle yet| Misinformation Review
The potential for harm entrenched in mis- and disinformation content, regardless of intentionality, opens space for a new analytical agenda to investigate the weaponization of identity-based features like gender, race, and ethnicity through the lens of violence. Therefore, we lay out the triangle of violence to support new studies aiming to investigate multimedia content, victims,| Misinformation Review
This editorial provides an overview of the key statistics for Volume 5 (2024) of the HKS Misinformation Review, including submission and acceptance rates, accepted article types, publication speed and frequency, citation impact, most-viewed articles, engagement and readership, as well as author and reviewer demographics. Acknowledgements We extend our sincere thanks to everyone who contributed to making Volume 5| Misinformation Review
This study investigates the impact of educational interventions and feedback on users' ability to detect manipulated images on social media, addressing a gap in research that has primarily focused on algorithmic approaches. Through a pre-registered randomized and controlled experiment, we found that feedback and educational content significantly improved participants' ability to detect manipulated images on| Misinformation Review
Experts consider misinformation a significant societal concern due to its associated problems like political polarization, erosion of trust, and public health challenges. However, these broad effects can occur independently of misinformation, illustrating a misalignment with the narrow focus of the prevailing misinformation concept. We propose using disagreement—conflicting attitudes and beliefs—as a more effective framework for| Misinformation Review
State media outlets spread propaganda disguised as news online, prompting social media platforms to attach state-affiliated media tags to their accounts. Do these tags reduce belief in state media misinformation? Previous studies suggest the tags reduce misperceptions but focus on Russia, and current research does not compare these tags with other interventions. Contrary to expectations,| Misinformation Review
Alternative cancer treatments are associated with earlier time to death when used without evidence-based treatments. Our study suggests alternative cancer clinics providing scientifically unsupported cancer treatments spent an estimated $15,839,504 on Google ads from 2012 to 2023 targeting users in the United States. The ads led to an estimated 6,717,663 website visits. Paid traffic constituted| Misinformation Review
This article describes partisan-based, accuracy-based, and action-based discussions through which U.S. social media users and journalists express concerns about social media misinformation. While platform policy stands out as the most highly discussed topic by both social media users and journalists, much of it is cast through a party politics lens. The findings call for shifting| Misinformation Review
Many observers of the current explosion of generative AI worry about its impact on our information environment, with concerns being raised about the increased quantity, quality, and personalization of misinformation. We assess these arguments with evidence from communication studies, cognitive science, and political science. We argue that current concerns about the effects of generative AI| Misinformation Review
