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Hard to change people's opinions, but easier to nudge them, research suggests
Rampant deepfakes and false news are often blamed for swaying votes. Research suggests it’s hard to change people’s political opinions, but easier to nudge their behaviour.
The World Economic Forum justified placing misinformation as the planet’s most urgent priority because, according to its Global Risks Report for 2024, it could “radically disrupt electoral processes in several economies” and “trigger civil unrest and possibly confrontation”. More recently, misinformation has been blamed for a swathe of social and political trends — from people’s reluctance to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and rising discrimination against migrants, to the Brexit vote for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union and scepticism about the seriousness of climate change. Last year, Eady and his colleagues published the results of one such empirical analysis 1, which considered a high-profile and controversial question: to what extent did misinformation spread on the social-media platform Twitter (as it was then known) by Russian sources influence the 2016 US election?
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