Page - 187 - in VULNERABLE - The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19

187Does Debunking Work? Correcting COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media worsened.17 Much of the misinformation about the coronavirus remains unchecked and continues to circulate, especially on Twitter.18 Why and how misinformation spreads and has an impact on behaviours and beliefs is a complex and multidimensional phenom- enon.19 There is an emerging rich academic literature on misinfor- mation, particularly in the context of social media.20 Here, I make no attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of that work. Rather, I focus on two relatively narrow questions: Is debunking an effec- tive strategy; If so, what kind of counter-messaging is most effective? The goal of this article is to bring together relevant empirical research and expert commentary to serve as a resource and guide in the battle against misinformation (hence the heavy referencing) and to stand as a defence of these efforts.21 17. Allcott, Gentzkow & Yu, supra note 16. 18. J Scott Brennen et al, “Types, Sources, and Claims of COVID-19 Misinformation” (7 April 2020) at 1, online: Reuters  Institute  for  the  Study  of  Journalism,  University  of  Oxford <https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/types-sources-and-claims- covid-19-misinformation>: “On Twitter, 59% of posts rated as false in our sample by fact-checkers remain up.” See also Craig Timberg, “On Twitter, Almost 60 Percent of False Claims about Coronavirus Remain Online—Without a Warning Label”, Washington  Post (7 April 2020), online: <https://www. washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/07/twitter-almost-60-percent-false- claims-about-coronavirus-remain-online-without-warning-label/>. 19. Dietram A Scheufele & Nicole M Krause, “Science Audiences, Misinformation, and Fake News” (2019) 116:16 PNAS 7662 at 7662, DOI: <10.1073/pnas. 1805871115>: “[W]e show how being misinformed is a function of a person’s ability and motivation to spot falsehoods, but also of other group-level and societal factors that increase the chances of citizens to be exposed to correct(ive) information.” 20. See generally Yuxi Wang et al, “Systematic Literature Review on the Spread of Health-related Misinformation on Social Media” (2019) 240:112552 Social Science & Medicine 1 at 1, DOI: <10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112552>: “Overall, we observe an increasing trend in published articles on health-related misinfor- mation and the role of social media in its propagation.” See also Denise-Marie Ordway, “Fake News and the Spread of Misinformation: A Research Roundup” (1 September 2017), online: Journalist’s  Resource <https://journalistsresource.org/ studies/society/internet/fake-news-conspiracy-theories-journalism-research/>. 21. The word “debunking” is less than ideal, as some may feel it fails to capture the need to listen to and engage the public. It can also be associated with a more aggressive, or mocking, approach (a strategy I criticize below). However, in total, with those critiques noted, I still feel it is a good catch-all word that, as defined by Amy Sippitt, can be used to refer to “factual messages which seek to rebut inaccurate factual claims.” See Amy Sippitt, “The Backfire Effect: Does It Exist? And Does It Matter for Factcheckers?” (March 2019) at 7, online: Full Fact <https://fullfact.org/blog/2019/mar/does-backfire-effect-exist/>.