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Tuesday, 1 July 2025
Medical News

Two-week social media news habits boost knowledge and trust

Two-week social media news habits boost knowledge and trust

Unlike popular apprehensions, consumption of social media news can make users more knowledgeable and reliable if they follow the right sources. It is mentioned here how two accounts can make a difference.

Study: After news on social media, knowledge, trust increases accuracy and trustImage Credit: Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock.com

A study published in Nature human behavior Reports that the following news on social media can not always have harmful consequences; Rather, it can improve users’ knowledge, trust accuracy and trust. The study was led by researchers at the University of Zurich, Switzerland and California, USA.

background

Social media has become an integral part of modern life, with more than 60% of global population uses it for communication and information access. Despite being a huge source of information, experts have criticized social media to spread low quality and often false information that can potentially mislead their users.

The spread of false information is rapid on some social media platforms, where algorithms recommend news and entertainment on public affairs, highlight resentment, and display political opponents. These factors can contribute to more polarization, radicalization and confusion due to misinformation and disintegration between users.

Many intervention have been developed to combat these factors, mainly focus on reducing false content on platforms and encouraging users to rely on facts and rely on verified information. However, these interventions can have unexpected results on the perception of the user’s ‘good’ content and it can only be applied by or by social media platforms.

In the current study, researchers adopted a different approach to increase the risk of users for good or verified material rather than reducing false or harmful materials.

the study

Researchers used an online field on more than 3,000 social media users in France and Germany, who received an incentive to follow a politically balanced news outlet on Instagram and WhatsApp for two weeks.

The participants were randomly assigned to the treatment group and the control group. Participants of the treatment group were asked to follow two news accounts, while the participants of the control group followed the non-cooking, cinema or non-arts covering the art.

The primary objective of the study was to examine the effect of following social media news on four important results, including the current affairs knowledge, awareness about the circulation of true and false claims, confidence accuracy and confidence in news media organizations.

In particular, random design enabled researchers to conclude the reason for the effects of the following news on these results.

major findings

The findings of the study have shown that there is a small but statistically significant increase in the knowledge of current affairs after news on social media platforms, participants’ ability to distinguish between true and false news stories, awareness about true news and confidence in news, journalists and news organizations.

Researchers believed that these effects are due to the increase in exposure to the news materials of the participants and the possibility of learning from this material. These factors would have helped the participants update their perceptions and build confidence in news, journalists and news organizations.

The use of daily social media comes with many distractions that are potentially more interesting and eye -catching than news materials. In the treatment group, participants did not need to follow the news. Instead, they were asked to follow only two news accounts for two weeks. During this time, he still had complete access to many other attractive and attention distraces that attracting attention that social media can usually introduce, such as entertainment materials, personal updates and viral trends.

Despite such a small window of exposure, social media news channels managed to create average impact of average among the participants. In particular, the feelings of being informed in the study, the interest in news and politics, social media news on the feelings of political were no significant impact. EfficacyOr feelings towards specific political parties or political events, highlighting that approach, are very resistant to change.

By analyzing the comments of the participants, the study found that some users were unaware of free and easy access to news organizations on large -scale Instagram and WhatsApp. About 51% of the participants expressed their desire to follow these news channels even after the completion of the study. These observation collectively suggest that the user’s unknown about the availability of verified social media news channels can partially contribute to the consumption of low news on social media.

Researchers also used compliance measures, such as self-reported data and uploaded screenshots, to verify whether participants have followed news accounts and active information. These additional checks confirmed that most of the participants in treatment groups complied with study instructions.

Importantly, the study found that participants enabling information for news accounts showed more improvements, suggesting that information could play an important role in increasing exposure and engagement.

Study importance

Studies highlights the small but important beneficial effects of the following news materials on social media platforms in terms of knowledge, confidence accuracy and confidence. The main findings suggest that improving contact with the news media can be a promising option to reduce lower quality information from junk news.

Viewed benefits can be explained through cognitive processing principles. People mostly receive short-form news with brief, visual elements on social media platforms, which can increase information retention by reducing cognitive overload. In addition, interactive features of these platforms may promote deep engagement.

Many social media platforms, including Facebook, are currently reducing news channels, claiming that users are not interested in news and this news is ‘highly replaceable’. Current study conclusions, however, suggest possible demands for free and reliable news on social media platforms.

However, the author warns that the results may not be normal to all platforms or countries and require more research on long -term effects and various social media references.

Overall, optimistic evidences provided by this study highlight the need for future research on social media platforms with various characteristics or uses to examine the generality of current findings. The study also supports using social media as a possible tool to promote a well -informed society.

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