Today’s fragmented and digital media environment may create a fertile breeding ground for the uncontrolled spread of disinformation. Although previous research has investigated the effects of misinformation and corrective efforts, we know too little about the role of visuals in disinformation and fact checking. Against this backdrop, we conducted an online experiment with a diverse sample of U.S. citizens (N = 1,404) to investigate the credibility of textual versus multimodal (text-plus-visual) disinformation, and the effects of textual and multimodal fact checkers in refuting disinformation on school shootings and refugees. Our findings indicate that, irrespective of the source, multimodal disinformation is considered slightly more credible than textual disinformation. Fact checkers can help to overcome the potential harmful consequences of disinformation. We also found that fact checkers can overcome partisan and attitudinal filters – which points to the relevance of fact checking as a journalistic discipline.

中文翻译：

---

一张照片描绘出一千个谎言？通过社交媒体传播多模态虚假信息和反驳的效果和机制

今天的碎片化和数字媒体环境可能为虚假信息的不受控制的传播创造了肥沃的温床。尽管之前的研究调查了错误信息和纠正措施的影响，但我们对视觉效果在虚假信息和事实核查中的作用知之甚少。在此背景下，我们对不同的美国公民样本 (N = 1,404) 进行了一项在线实验，以调查文本与多模式（文本加视觉）虚假信息的可信度，以及文本和多模式事实检查器在驳斥虚假信息方面的效果关于学校枪击事件和难民。我们的研究结果表明，无论来源如何，多模态虚假信息都被认为比文本虚假信息更可信。事实核查员可以帮助克服虚假信息的潜在有害后果。我们还发现事实核查员可以克服党派和态度过滤——这表明事实核查作为新闻学科的相关性。