Iffy-Or-Not: Extending the Web to Support the Critical Evaluation of Fallacious Texts
This addresses the challenge of opinion formation in the face of false content for social media users, but it is incremental as it builds on existing argumentation theory.
The paper tackles the problem of misinformation on social platforms by developing Iffy-Or-Not (ION), a browser extension that highlights fallacious content and suggests queries to encourage critical thinking, finding in a user study (N=18) that it increases attentiveness and expands perspectives, though some users expressed aversion.
Social platforms have expanded opportunities for deliberation with the comments being used to inform one's opinion. However, using such information to form opinions is challenged by unsubstantiated or false content. To enhance the quality of opinion formation and potentially confer resistance to misinformation, we developed Iffy-Or-Not (ION), a browser extension that seeks to invoke critical thinking when reading texts. With three features guided by argumentation theory, ION highlights fallacious content, suggests diverse queries to probe them with, and offers deeper questions to consider and chat with others about. From a user study (N=18), we found that ION encourages users to be more attentive to the content, suggests queries that align with or are preferable to their own, and poses thought-provoking questions that expands their perspectives. However, some participants expressed aversion to ION due to misalignments with their information goals and thinking predispositions. Potential backfiring effects with ION are discussed.