Fake news becomes more successful through search engines

A new study has found that people who use search engines to check the veracity of news are more likely to believe false information to be true than those who do not carry out online research. This is not only due to the users, but also to Google & Co.

In a study published in "Nature", US scientists found that the advice to check information picked up on social media online does not necessarily mean that people are less likely to fall for fake news. On the contrary: the research came to the surprising conclusion that people who verify reports via online searches are more likely to believe false information.

For the study, the researchers asked 3006 people to assess true and false reports that were shown to them by mainstream media and low-quality sources. The reports to be assessed were not older than 48 hours. For their part, the scientists had the reports checked by experts and classified as true, false, misleading or impossible to determine.

Half of the participants were asked to use an online search engine for the evaluation, while the other half were instructed to submit an evaluation without using a search engine. Surprisingly, people who used a search engine were 19 percent more likely to rate a false report as true than the group who were not allowed to use a search engine. At the same time, the researchers found that online searches did not lead to a higher agreement with true reports.

Follow-up studies showed that online research also made approval of fake news more likely if an initial opinion had already been formed or the reports were older. This was also the case for the coronavirus pandemic, which has been widely and extensively reported on.

The study supports a theory according to which online searches for misinformation provide little credible information and fake news is at the top of the results instead. This is particularly true for misinformation about current events, according to the theory.

Fake news spreads fake news

According to the study, this could be because dubious sources specifically use search terms in their texts to generate such results. On the other hand, such media often quote similar reports from other sources. More reputable portals could also pick up on fake news due to a "media dynamic", which means that these prevail over less credible reports in the search engines.

In the case of recently disseminated news, it is also likely that it has not yet been verified by fact-checkers. It is therefore not surprising that people are particularly often confronted with false reports when they want to check untrustworthy reports using an online search, the authors of the study write.

This is problematic because another finding of the study is that people who received the search results with the worst news quality were most likely to believe false information. Subjects who saw very good results, on the other hand, were just as unlikely to believe fake news as the group who did not use a search engine.

Search quality is crucial

According to the study, the incorrect assessment of misleading reports is primarily due to the quality of online searches. The test subjects who entered a headline or the address (URL) of an untrue report in the search engine were particularly likely to see misinformation in the results. 77 percent of these search queries returned at least one link to fake news in the top 10 results, compared to only 21 percent of other searches.

People often searched specifically for information that confirms their pre-existing views instead of looking for objective and reliable sources, comments Josephine Schmitt on the study. She is scientific coordinator at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum. "This can lead to them consciously or unconsciously preferring and accepting inferior information. Knowledge of what constitutes reliable and objective sources is weak in many parts of society. AI-generated content, especially images and films, makes identification even more difficult."

Political attitudes may be more important

Philipp Müller, academic advisor at the Institute for Media and Communication Studies at the University of Mannheim, takes a similar view. However, he points out "that the results tables in the appendix of the study clearly show that agreement with the political message of a false report is much more important in determining whether it is considered credible than the search for information".

Müller does not believe that the study should be interpreted in such a way that inferior sources are believed more strongly. "It is true that the results show that a higher proportion of low-quality sources in search results increases the credibility of false information, whereas a higher proportion of high-quality sources does not clearly lower their credibility compared to the control group. However, this may also mean that in the control group, which did not search for information, there was already a good assessment of the misinformation, which is not significantly improved by research."

Algorithms exacerbate the problem

The experts agree that search engine algorithms also play an important role. They link content and are influenced by the user's search history, says Josephine Schmitt. "So if someone has already visited or searched for low-quality sources, the algorithms tend to suggest similar content. In this context, the ability to formulate 'good' searches, i.e. to have efficient search strategies, is also key."

Sabrina Heike Kessler sees this as a major responsibility for Google & Co. She is a Senior Research and Teaching Associate at the Institute for Communication Science and Media Research, Department of Science Communication, at the University of Zurich. They need to design their algorithms "with care and a sense of responsibility". "For us researchers, however, the exact functioning of these algorithms often remains an opaque 'black box'. Without access to the relevant data, we cannot determine exactly whether and how - and for which topics - such responsible adaptation actually takes place sufficiently."

A "key element" is also the "promotion of source and media literacy in all age groups", says Josephine Schmitt. "This includes knowledge about how search engines work, algorithms, media criticism skills and search strategies. The current widespread focus on younger target groups is helpful, but in view of the increasing spread and acceptance of diverse misinformation, source and media literacy should be seen as an indispensable element for the smooth functioning of our democracy in all age groups."