2021/06/15 by SUMITRA BADRINATHAN, Sumitra Badrinathan · 146 citations
Medicine · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Computer science #Intervention (counseling) #Law #Media Influence and Politics #Media literacy #Medical education #Medicine #Misinformation #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Pedagogy #Political science #Psychological intervention #Psychology #Public relations #Social Media and Politics #The Internet
paper · doi:10.1017/s0003055421000459
published in American Political Science Review 115(4), 1325-1341 (Cambridge University Press)
openalex publication_date 2021/06/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/17
Misinformation makes democratic governance harder, especially in developing countries. Despite its real-world import, little is known about how to combat misinformation outside of the United States, particularly in places with low education, accelerating Internet access, and encrypted information sharing. This study uses a field experiment in India to test the efficacy of a pedagogical intervention on respondents’ ability to identify misinformation during the 2019 elections ( N = 1,224). Treated respondents received hour-long in-person media literacy training in which enumerators discussed inoculation strategies, corrections, and the importance of verifying misinformation, all in a coherent learning module. Receiving this hour-long media literacy intervention did not significantly increase respondents’ ability to identify misinformation on average. However, treated respondents who support the ruling party became significantly less able to identify pro-attitudinal stories. These findings point to the resilience of misinformation in India and the presence of motivated reasoning in a traditionally nonideological party system.