"Although interventions that warn about the harms of misinformation may be effective in lowering the credibility of false information, they may also cause suspicion related to factually accurate information. To explore these contradictory outcomes of exposure to media literacy messages, we used an o ... nline survey experiment with a diverse sample of 1105 participants in the U.S. In this experiment, we randomly exposed people to traditional warning messages about the threats of misinformation or relativising warning messages that placed misinformation’s threat in the context of the abundance of honest information. We additionally varied the specificity of the warning message (i.e. topic specific versus generic). We did not find direct overall effects on truth discernment but observed conditional effects on decreasing beliefs in misinformation and negative spillover effects on the truth rating of accurate information. We conclude that the effectiveness of media literacy interventions is far from straightforward, and document how preexisting media trust plays a key role in the effects of such interventions. Based on our findings, we suggest that the effectiveness of specific and general media literacy messages may be contingent upon tailoring the message to levels of existing (dis)trust." (Abstract) more

"In the battle against misinformation, do negative spillover effects of communicative efforts intended to protect audiences from inaccurate information exist? Given the relatively limited prevalence of misinformation in people’s news diets, this study explores if the heightened salience of misinfo ... rmation as a persistent societal threat can have an unintended spillover effect by decreasing the credibility of factually accurate news. Using an experimental design (N = 1305), we test whether credibility ratings of factually accurate news are subject to exposure to misinformation, corrective information, misinformation warnings, and news media literacy (NML) interventions relativizing the misinformation threat. Findings suggest that efforts like warning about the threat of misinformation can prime general distrust in authentic news, hinting toward a deception bias in the context of fear of misinformation being salient. Next, the successfulness of NML interventions is not straight forward if it comes to avoiding that the salience of misinformation distorts people’s creditabilityaccuracy. We conclude that the threats of the misinformation order may not just be remedied by fighting false information, but also by reestablishing trust in legitimate news." (Abstract) more