NCT05030883

The Effect of a Protective Message on Critical Evaluation of Fake News

The Effect of Source Type and Protective Message on the Critical Evaluation of News Messages on Facebook: An Experimental Study in the Netherlands.

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 400 (actual)
• Sponsor: Tilburg University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Background: Disinformation has become an increasing societal concern, especially due to the speed that news is shared in the current digital era. In particular in the healthcare sector disinformation can lead to serious casualties, as the current COVID-19 crisis clearly shows. Objective: The main aim of this study was to experimentally examine the effects of information about the source's and a displayed protective warning message on users' critical evaluation of news items, as well as the perception of accuracy of the news item. Methods: A 3(unreliable versus reliable versus no identified source) x 2 (protective message: with versus without) between subject design has been conducted among 307 participants (mean age = 29 years, SD = 10.9 years).

Conditions

• Disclosure of Protective Message

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Source of news	The main intervention was the source of the news that was shown to participants

Timeline

• Start date: 2019-05-10
• Primary completion: 2019-06-20
• Completion: 2019-07-01
• First posted: 2021-09-01
• Last updated: 2025-09-05

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Netherlands