Exoskeleton for the Mind: Exploring Strategies Against Misinformation with a Metacognitive Agent
This addresses the global problem of misinformation on social media platforms, but it is incremental as it builds on existing tools without achieving superior results.
The researchers tackled misinformation on social media by developing a metacognitive anti-misinformation agent and evaluated it in a real-world Twitter context, finding that no single strategy outperformed the control in studies with participants (n=17, n=57, n=49).
Misinformation is a global problem in modern social media platforms with few solutions known to be effective. Social media platforms have offered tools to raise awareness of information, but these are closed systems that have not been empirically evaluated. Others have developed novel tools and strategies, but most have been studied out of context using static stimuli, researcher prompts, or low fidelity prototypes. We offer a new anti-misinformation agent grounded in theories of metacognition that was evaluated within Twitter. We report on a pilot study (n=17) and multi-part experimental study (n=57, n=49) where participants experienced three versions of the agent, each deploying a different strategy. We found that no single strategy was superior over the control. We also confirmed the necessity of transparency and clarity about the agent's underlying logic, as well as concerns about repeated exposure to misinformation and lack of user engagement.