Faster Than the Truth

A false story about a celebrity's death or a supposed new government rule can travel across social media in minutes, while the correction often arrives hours later and reaches far fewer people. Studies of online sharing have found that false news tends to spread faster than true news, in part because it is more surprising and more emotionally charged, qualities that make people want to pass it on. Fact-checkers work to slow this flow, but they face a structural disadvantage. A rumor needs only to be plausible; a correction must be accurate, sourced, and carefully worded, which takes time. Moreover, repeating a falsehood in order to debunk it can, under some conditions, make the false claim more familiar and therefore more believable to people who remember the claim but forget the correction. For this reason, some communication researchers recommend leading with the truth rather than the myth, explaining why the false claim is wrong, and giving people a simple alternative account to remember. Others emphasize "prebunking": teaching people in advance the common tricks of manipulation, such as fake experts and doctored images, so that they are less likely to be fooled in the first place.