Replication Data for: The Covid-19 Infodemic and the Efficacy of Interventions Intended to Reduce Misinformation

Social media platforms have taken unprecedented steps to combat misinformation about Covid-19. However, critics question whether the most common strategy – labeling and alerting readers to misinformation – successfully counters misinformation or rather backfires and reinforces inaccurate beliefs. Using a pair of survey experiments, we examine the efficacy of corrections in reducing accuracy misperceptions and social media engagements that spread false claims. Simply flagging fake headlines had little effect on subjects’ accuracy assessments and social media responses. Corrections explicitly countering false claims with factual information were more effective, though many persisted in believing false information. Despite the increasing politicization of America’s pandemic response and polarization more generally, corrections to false claims with and without a partisan valence were equally effective, and we found no evidence of partisan backfire effects. While high social media consumers are exposed to more misinformation, greater fluency with false claims did not reduce the efficacy of corrections.