(Web Desk) - Millions of people turn to Google and other search engines every day to find out information about their world — and fact-check the information they come across online.
But a new study suggests that an almost instinctual move to Google when we don't know if a piece of content is true or false could have a pernicious effect.
Writing in the journal Nature, researchers found that when tasked with fact-checking news headlines via search engines — and specifically Google — people may be more willing to believe fake news and misinformation if they relied on search results alone.
In other words, searching online to evaluate news may actually increase belief in misinformation.
The research, led by University of Central Florida researcher Kevin Aslett, involved 3,006 respondents in the United States.
Participants who were told to search online to verify recently published news stories were 19% more likely to perceive false claims as true compared to those who were not prompted to do so, the study found.
The researchers also discovered that when people used search to fact-check misinformation, they are more likely to find corroborating evidence from what the researchers term as "low-quality news sources," which often re-used the same information and thus "polluted" search engine results.
Taken together, they say that the quality of search results plays a role in how people interpret information, as true content had higher-quality results. The stakes, the researchers write, can be high, citing the spread in conspiracy theories as a key example of this effect in action.
"The QAnon movement recommends that people 'do the research'themselves," the researchers write, "which seems like a counter-intuitive strategy for a conspiracy-theory-oriented movement.
However, our findings suggest that the strategy of pushing people to verify low-quality information online might paradoxically be even more effective at misinforming them."
This discovery shows the significance of digital literacy programs to empower individuals to assess the quality and accuracy of information they encounter online, they conclude.
One actionable takeaway from the results is that copying and pasting a headline or URL into Google might be more likely to expose readers to unreliable sources to fact-check the information.