Social Correction on Social Media: A Quantitative Analysis of Comment Behaviour and Reliability

2025-05-05

AI Summary

This study investigates the effectiveness and reliability of lay users’ skeptical comments—termed “social correction”—in countering misinformation on social media. Using an online controlled experiment, behavioral tracking, and validated scales measuring perceived credibility and self-confidence, coupled with statistical modeling, we find that although skeptical comments occur significantly less frequently than supportive ones, they exhibit higher factual accuracy. Their production is jointly governed by three interdependent mechanisms: credibility assessment, self-confidence, and reputational concerns—yielding a “conservative and deliberative” behavioral pattern. This work provides the first empirical evidence of this tripartite interaction, elucidating the cognitive and social underpinnings of social correction. The findings offer critical theoretical insights and empirical support for designing lightweight, high-fidelity, user-generated interventions in platform moderation systems. (149 words)

Technology Category

• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction
• Natural Language Processing: Fact-Checking / Misinformation Detection (NLP Focus)
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Attacks and countermeasures in recommendation systems
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI
• Social Networks and Social Media: Media and governance, opinion dynamics, filter bubbles, polarization

Abstract

Corrections given by ordinary social media users, also referred to as Social Correction have emerged as a viable intervention against misinformation as per the recent literature. However, little is known about how often users give disputing or endorsing comments and how reliable those comments are. An online experiment was conducted to investigate how users' credibility evaluations of social media posts and their confidence in those evaluations combined with online reputational concerns affect their commenting behaviour. The study found that participants exhibited a more conservative approach when giving disputing comments compared to endorsing ones. Nevertheless, participants were more discerning in their disputing comments than endorsing ones. These findings contribute to a better understanding of social correction on social media and highlight the factors influencing comment behaviour and reliability.

Problem

• Analyzes frequency of disputing vs endorsing comments on social media
• Examines reliability of user comments in correcting misinformation
• Investigates how credibility and reputation concerns affect commenting behavior

Innovation

• Online experiment analyzes user credibility evaluations
• Examines confidence and reputational effects on comments
• Compares conservative disputing versus endorsing behaviors