During the COVID-19 pandemic, many are the hoaxes and myths that run through long chains of messages through social networks. The mass media, making use of its informative function, try to demolish these myths by explaining why they are false .
The problem is that, when it comes to delegitimizing any myth, it is also being talked about, it is spreading, it is reaching more people. Which could be fueling the hoax itself .
This happens with any false information, fake news , pseudosciences or even the press of the heart.
Spreading the lie
In a 2005 study by Ian Skurnik , Carolyn Yoon , Denise C. Park, and Norbert Schwarz , published in the Journal of Consumer Research , the power of hoaxes to spread even when bad-mouthing was revealed.
In the study, the volunteers had to read various dubious claims such as that “shark cartilage is good for arthritis” (which is not supported by scientific evidence).
Most of the participants were able to spot the fake news or hoaxes, however, days later, when the study volunteers were followed, it was found that many were more likely to repeat those misconceptions . This was particularly the case in older people, who tended to accept a statement as true simply because it was more familiar to them.
At the same time, efforts to debate issues that science has already considered settled, such as natural selection in evolution, or the safety of vaccines, can also raise doubts in already convinced audiences . When a doctor and an anti-vaccine are placed on equal terms at a discussion table, for example, the anti-vaccine arguments are being given some legitimacy, even if they are based on false data.
In the long term, the repetition of the arguments of the anti-vaccines can get to penetrate, by familiarity, in the audience, which ends up assuming as true or, at least, acceptable.
On a psychological level, familiarity facilitates fluency , and the dark side of fluency is that it makes it easier to suspend judgment. When an idea is constantly repeated or repeated, the idea becomes more fluid, we think about it less.
The paradigmatic example of this process are set phrases, aphorisms, apothegms and, above all, rhymes (because a message in rhyme form is easier to remember, so it is always more familiar). Automatically, being so ubiquitous, any of these formulas is repeated in any situation, and is perpetuated generation after generation. As Göbbels once said: “a lie repeated a thousand times becomes a truth.”
In a way, it is the same process that takes place when a writer must evaluate his own manuscript, a thousand times read or reviewed: it is so familiar to him that part of his ability to evaluate it or find errors in it is hampered.
In other words, sometimes you also have to avoid giving too much importance to certain erroneous ideas from a communication medium, simply so as not to make them more popular, more familiar, more fluid … and more true.
Reference: How Warnings about False Claims Become Recommendations, Ian Skurnik, Carolyn Yoon, Denise C. Park, Norbert Schwarz, Journal of Consumer Research, Volume 31, Issue 4, March 2005, Pages 713–724, https://doi.org /10.1086/426605.
