Partisan Fact-Checkers' Warnings Can Effectively Correct Individuals' Misbeliefs About Political Misinformation

TL;DR

This study shows that partisan fact-checkers can effectively reduce political misinformation beliefs without backfire effects, especially when their stance aligns with the audience's political ideology, challenging prior assumptions about bias.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence that partisan fact-checkers can be effective in correcting political misbeliefs, even for conservatives, when explicitly labeled and aligned with their ideology.

Findings

Partisan fact-checkers decrease perceived accuracy of misinformation.

Effectiveness is higher when fact-checkers' stance matches audience ideology.

Explicitly labeled partisan fact-checkers are particularly effective for conservatives.

Abstract

Political misinformation, particularly harmful when it aligns with individuals' preexisting beliefs and political ideologies, has become widespread on social media platforms. In response, platforms like Facebook and X introduced warning messages leveraging fact-checking results from third-party fact-checkers to alert users against false content. However, concerns persist about the effectiveness of these fact-checks, especially when fact-checkers are perceived as politically biased. To address these concerns, this study presents findings from an online human-subject experiment (N=216) investigating how the political stances of fact-checkers influence their effectiveness in correcting misbeliefs about political misinformation. Our findings demonstrate that partisan fact-checkers can decrease the perceived accuracy of political misinformation and correct misbeliefs without triggering backfire effects. This correction is even more pronounced when the misinformation aligns with individuals' political ideologies. Notably, while previous research suggests that fact-checking warnings are less effective for conservatives than liberals, our results suggest that explicitly labeled partisan fact-checkers, positioned as political counterparts to conservatives, are particularly effective in reducing conservatives' misbeliefs toward pro-liberal misinformation.