TY - JOUR
T1 - To label or not to label
T2 - The effect of stance and credibility labels on readers’ selection and perception of news articles
AU - Gao, Mingkun
AU - Xiao, Ziang
AU - Karahalios, Karrie
AU - Fu, Wai Tat
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.
PY - 2018/11
Y1 - 2018/11
N2 - Social media sites use different labels to help users find and select news feeds. For example, Blue Feed, Red Feed, a news feed created by the Wall Street Journal, use stance labels to separate news articles with opposing political ideologies to help people explore diverse opinions. To combat the spread of fake news, Facebook has experimented with putting credibility labels on news articles to help readers decide whether the content is trustworthy. To systematically understand the effects of stance and credibility labels on online news selection and consumption, we conducted a controlled experiment to study how these labels influence the selection, perceived extremeness, and level of agreement of news articles. Results show that stance labels may intensify selective exposure - a tendency for people to look for agreeable opinions – and make people more vulnerable to polarized opinions and fake news. We found, however, that the effect of credibility labels on reducing selective exposure and recognizing fake news is limited. Although originally designed to encourage exposure to opposite viewpoints, stance labels can make fake news articles look more trustworthy, and they may lower people’s perception of the extremeness of fake news articles. Our results have important implications on the subtle effects of stance and credibility labels on online news consumption.
AB - Social media sites use different labels to help users find and select news feeds. For example, Blue Feed, Red Feed, a news feed created by the Wall Street Journal, use stance labels to separate news articles with opposing political ideologies to help people explore diverse opinions. To combat the spread of fake news, Facebook has experimented with putting credibility labels on news articles to help readers decide whether the content is trustworthy. To systematically understand the effects of stance and credibility labels on online news selection and consumption, we conducted a controlled experiment to study how these labels influence the selection, perceived extremeness, and level of agreement of news articles. Results show that stance labels may intensify selective exposure - a tendency for people to look for agreeable opinions – and make people more vulnerable to polarized opinions and fake news. We found, however, that the effect of credibility labels on reducing selective exposure and recognizing fake news is limited. Although originally designed to encourage exposure to opposite viewpoints, stance labels can make fake news articles look more trustworthy, and they may lower people’s perception of the extremeness of fake news articles. Our results have important implications on the subtle effects of stance and credibility labels on online news consumption.
KW - Credibility label
KW - Selective exposure
KW - Social opinion perception
KW - Stance label
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85066416284&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85066416284&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3274324
DO - 10.1145/3274324
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85066416284
SN - 2573-0142
VL - 2
JO - Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
JF - Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
IS - CSCW
M1 - 55
ER -