The selected article written by Elmie Nekmat (2020), focused on the effect of providing a fact-check alert on articles available online. Nekmat (2020) use of two different aspects in two related areas of information sharing was a highly appropriate direction for the study as it provided more scope to draw conclusions from. The conclusions are focused in regards to the sharing of (mis)information across media and social media platforms, in particular the social media platform of Facebook. Nekmat (2020, p. 10) acknowledges the limitations which occur in the results due to the potential bias which were inherent in the selection criteria of participants and the subject matter used. There was a single stimuli used, for futher research more extensive and varied stimuli along with a varied popultaion group would be required to reacher more stubstantial conclusions. This acknowledgement and the realisation that this inhibits the overall prevalence of sharing vs non-sharing on social media results, demonstrates the narrow nature of the study. The correlation between sharing of reputable sources verse new online sources shows the slow shift amongst some of the population the mistrust of organisations (Nekmat, 2020, p. 10). The concept of fact-checking alerts is routed deeply in behavioural analysis and changing behaviour through nudges over a period of time (Nekmat, 2020, p. 2).
Personally, I agree with Nekmat’s (2020) conclusion that the use of fact-check alerts could be an effective means to “dampen the sharing of news information” (p.10). As the world is currently experiencing mass media produced escalation of events, the coronavirus around the world and the hysteria of toilet paper buying which has occurred recently, I have to agree that this may have been prevent if facts rather than scenarios were disseminated through media outlets and shared across social media. I have found it rather ironic that whilst reading this article many shares of media were occurring with (mis)information. The use of a fact-checking alert would help people in research as they often use the first answer that they find rather then reading widely. Fact-checking alerts would assist people to negotiate the large amounts of information that they have access to.
Nekmat, E. (2020). Nudge Effect of Fact-Check Alerts: Source Influence and Media Skepticism on Sharing of News Misinformation in Social Media. Social Media + Society, 1(1), pp. 1-14. Sage Publishing. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305119897322