Abstract

Recent years show a growing concern about the spread of misinformation on social media. One of the avenues to address this challenge is the practice of social correction—the correction of misinformation conducted by other social media users. While social correction focuses on individuals in the context of their respective social media networks, we offer the concept of collective social correction: an ongoing practice of information verification, occurring within group contexts. Employing a mixed-methods approach, we examine collective social correction by analysing the case study of a large-scale Israeli WhatsApp group, led by a journalist, and devoted to informal discussion of politics and news. Our findings point at the importance of active, discursive processes of information verification in the current media environment, particularly when it comes to political (mis)information. The study further highlights the role of group dynamics and group norms—modelled by the behaviour of everyday participants as well as of the group admin—in promoting the adoption of journalistic practices of fact-checking and source vetting and increasing participant accountability. Finally, the paper considers to what extent the interplay between social dynamics and information verification processes can inform our understanding of other, non-specialized group contexts as well.

摘要

近年来，人们越来越关注社交媒体上错误信息的传播。应对这一挑战的途径之一是社会纠正实践——纠正其他社交媒体用户进行的错误信息。虽然社会矫正关注个人在各自社交媒体网络的背景下，但我们提供了集体社会矫正的概念：持续的信息验证实践，发生在群体环境中。采用混合方法，我们通过分析由记者领导并致力于政治和新闻的非正式讨论的大型以色列 WhatsApp 小组的案例研究来检验集体社会矫正。我们的研究结果指出了在当前媒体环境中积极的、话语性的信息验证过程的重要性，尤其是在涉及政治（错误）信息时。该研究进一步强调了群体动态和群体规范（以日常参与者和群体管理员的行为为模型）在促进采用事实核查和来源审查的新闻实践以及增加参与者责任感方面的作用。最后，