Investigating Correction Effects of Different Modalities for Misinformation about COVID-19

Misinformation presented in different modalities about the COVID-19 pandemic has been prevalent. One approach to reducing the negative effects of misinformation is through corrective information. However, it is possible that people develop counter-attitude towards the corrective information and reaffirm their belief in misinformation, called the boomerang effect. Fewer studies examined how different modes of corrective information about COVID-19 may address the boomerang effect. With a 3-by-3 between-subject experiment design (n = 210), we first presented one of the three modalities of misinformation (text, image, video) to the participants, followed by one of the three modalities of corrective information (text, image, video) to examine the effect of the corrective information. The results showed that there was no boomerang effect after correction in all modalities, indicating that all corrective information successfully reduced participants' perceived credibility and potential action for misinformation. In the post-hoc analysis, the correction in the video mode worked best on text misinformation. Our results also suggested that image misinformation worked least effectively in terms of conveying misinformation.