RESEARCH

Journal of Experimental Political Science, Volume 11, Number 3, 2024

We use two field experiments, one of which was conducted in partnership with Brazil’s main newspaper, to investigate the effectiveness of multidimensional interventions against misinformation in São Paulo. The findings show that preemptive interventions can indeed reduce rumor acceptance and provide insights into the strategies to combat misinformation in democracies.

Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, Volume 4, 2024

We provide and examine an approach for detecting false stories that circulate as text and without hyperlinks, which are commonly found in the Global South. Our text-based approach relies on a combination of false stories identified by fact-checkers, supervised learning methods, natural language processing, and human review. We show that our approach is an important complement to the dominant approaches as it is more effective at detecting false news.

The Journal of Politics, Volume 84, Number 4, 2022

Drawing on a survey experiment during the 2018 elections in Brazil, we find that fact-checking corrections in Brazil are ineffective at reducing misinformation. They fail even when they are most likely to work: among nonpartisans and when they confirm individuals’ political predispositions. This study calls attention to the challenges of curbing political misinformation in developing democracies and urges future research to foster a better understanding of the dynamics of fake news across different contexts.