Does information source matter? Civil society in the fight against misinformation

The spread of political misinformation through the internet has been a challenge to several democracies across the globe. Research on political misperception is mainly concentrated in developed democracies. However, some recent studies on the topic in developing democracies have found that political misinformation might be even more difficult to combat through fact-checking than in developed democracies. One possible reason for the inability of fact-checking to correct misperceptions in the developing world is the lack of trust in the media and fact-checking agencies in these contexts. In this study, we test whether civil society actors and digital collaborative knowledge (collective intelligence) can be more effective than traditional media in making individuals reject misinformation. Civil society’s organizations and initiatives to fight disinformation are rising in Europe and elsewhere. Brazil is an excellent case to test the role of civil society and digital collaborative knowledge in the fight against misinformation. The country has been severely affected by political misinformation, and it has a vibrant civil society that has been actively engaged in the battle against misinformation. Based on a nationally representative online survey with 2599 brazilians and an embedded experiment, we compare the effectiveness of civil society actors relying on collective intelligence to combat political misinformation relative to traditional media sources.