Is Explanation the Cure? Misinformation Mitigation in the Short Term and Long Term

Yi-Li Hsu, Shih-Chieh Dai, Aiping Xiong, Lun-Wei Ku


Abstract
With advancements in natural language processing (NLP) models, automatic explanation generation has been proposed to mitigate misinformation on social media platforms in addition to adding warning labels to identified fake news. While many researchers have focused on generating good explanations, how these explanations can really help humans combat fake news is under-explored. In this study, we compare the effectiveness of a warning label and the state-of- the-art counterfactual explanations generated by GPT-4 in debunking misinformation. In a two-wave, online human-subject study, participants (N = 215) were randomly assigned to a control group in which false contents are shown without any intervention, a warning tag group in which the false claims were labeled, or an explanation group in which the false contents were accompanied by GPT-4 generated explanations. Our results show that both interventions significantly decrease participants’ self-reported belief in fake claims in an equivalent manner for the short-term and long-term. We discuss the implications of our findings and directions for future NLP-based misinformation debunking strategies.
Anthology ID:
2023.findings-emnlp.92
Volume:
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2023
Month:
December
Year:
2023
Address:
Singapore
Editors:
Houda Bouamor, Juan Pino, Kalika Bali
Venue:
Findings
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
1313–1323
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2023.findings-emnlp.92
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2023.findings-emnlp.92
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Yi-Li Hsu, Shih-Chieh Dai, Aiping Xiong, and Lun-Wei Ku. 2023. Is Explanation the Cure? Misinformation Mitigation in the Short Term and Long Term. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2023, pages 1313–1323, Singapore. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Is Explanation the Cure? Misinformation Mitigation in the Short Term and Long Term (Hsu et al., Findings 2023)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2023.findings-emnlp.92.pdf