Fighting Fakes on WhatsApp—Audience Perspectives on Fact Bots as Countermeasures

Abstract

The messengerization of society and the rise of meso-communication spaces have created new opportunity structures for spreading misinformation. Countermeasures in this context must meet other privacy standards than, for instance, journalist fact-checking or community management on more public social media spaces. In this article, we are specifically interested in audience perspectives on fact-check delivering bots to counter misinformation thriving in meso spaces on instant messengers. Despite initial journalistic projects, there is scarce knowledge of audience perspectives on such fact bots in private and meso-spaces. The current study sought to fill this gap and describe the themes and beliefs characterizing instant messenger users’ considerations of fact bots. To this end, we conducted explorative qualitative interviews (N = 18) with a heterogeneous group of German instant messenger users. We identified four central themes in interviewees’ considerations of employing fact bots: questionable advantages in terms of ease, perceived usefulness for educating others, perceived injunctive norms between safety and privacy, and distrust towards information curators. We describe these themes using the technology acceptance model as an organizing framework. Overall, our study provides meaningful starting points for further research and practitioners fighting misinformation in the messengerized society with its increased digital meso spaces.