Mass reporting can shut down your opponents on Facebook
Don’t like something on Facebook? You can shut down the page. That unfair option is apparently now open to anyone with a large Facebook following. This week a pro-science Facebook… Read more »
Category: Communication
Multiscreening opens you up to persuasion, but does it lead to behaviour change?
Remember when watching just one screen was enough? In 2014 more than fifty per cent of Australians aged between 18 and 49 used the internet while watching TV. This is… Read more »
Can we predict who might become an active anti-vaxxer?
What causes someone to suddenly embrace conspiracy theories? A new study suggests that people who express distrust in governments on social media are much more likely to embrace irrational beliefs… Read more »
Quantitative weight of evidence information does not remove the impact of false balance
Even when subjects are given numerical information about the proportion of experts on either side of an issue, false balance has a distorting effect on message recipients. Kohler (2016) conducted two experiments… Read more »
Graphs persuade some more than others
Sometimes the easiest way to persuade people is the simplest. Just including a graph as a peripheral cue convinced almost all (96 per cent) subjects of a recent study compared to just… Read more »
Sensible efforts to curb harmful comments on social media can backfire
What can social media platforms do to limit the amount of damaging information being shared on their sites? The increasing rise of social media has no doubt helped families and… Read more »
Bullshit is manipulative – at least for some
Many people are impressed by profound-sounding ‘bullshit’. That’s the finding of a study released this week with the impressive title On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit, published in Judgement and… Read more »
Media primes have a dose response effect like poisons
People who are repeatedly exposed to a biased message often quickly disbelieve it according to new research published by the Journal of Communication Research this week. A study of 351… Read more »
Why opinion trumps facts
Humans are lazy. We do what we can to protect our daily allotment of thinking resources – and that means trying not to invest too much energy into thinking if… Read more »