The effect of misinformation and inoculation: Replication of an experiment on the effect of false experts in the context of climate change communication.

Abstract

An important communication strategy of climate skeptics is the use of fake experts, who act as spokespersons, although they do not possess any expertise in the field. One promising approach to tackle the effect of misinformation is inoculation. Previous research focuses on the United States, and the comparably low effect sizes of previous research call for further examination and consolidation. This study aims to complement those findings with data for Germany and replicates and extends an experiment by Cook et al. with a 2 × 2 between-subjects design. Our study confirms the importance of pre-existing worldviews for climate-related attitudes. Regarding the effects of misinformation messages and most notably, the effects of inoculation messages we could not replicate the findings of Cook et al.: At least in our setting, the misinformation message and also inoculation preceding misinformation had hardly any effect on the climate-related attitudes under study.