I ran across a newspaper article that referenced this study, and it might be useful to use some of the suggestions.
The researchers experimented with subjects who were exposed to news items to study how readily accepted fake news might be. Here's an excerpt from the abstract which describes their conclusion and recommendation:
We found that, while users were generally more likely to believe articles that agreed with their point of view, asking users to rate pushed them to think more critically about the truthfulness of the articles. Moreover, once users had been asked to rate some articles, they remained critical of other articles as well, even without the rating prompt.
Article link: Do You Really Know If It’s True? How Asking Users to Rate Stories Affects Belief in Fake News on Social Media.
So first we need to be aware of confirmation bias. Then if we give a piece of news a rating it causes us to be more skeptical. Seems like good advice in this day and age of fake news.
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1:02 PM 9/2/2019
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