Want to squelch fake news? Let the readers take charge
Would you like to rid the internet of false political news stories and misinformation? Then consider using — yes — crowdsourcing. That’s right. A new study co-authored by an MIT professor shows that crowdsourced judgments about the quality of news sources may effectively marginalize false news stories and other kinds of online misinformation. “What we found is that, while there are real disagreements among Democrats and Republicans concerning mainstream news outlets, basically everybody — Democrats, Republicans, and professional fact-checkers — agree that the fake and hyperpartisan sites are not to be trusted,” says David Rand, an MIT scholar and co-author of a new paper detailing the study’s results. Indeed, using a pair of public-opinion surveys to evaluate of 60 news sources, the researchers found that Democrats trusted mainstream media outlets more than Republicans do — with the exception of Fox News, which Republicans trusted far more than Democrats did. But when it comes...