How to stop people sharing false news during elections

While political coverage dominates news media during election cycles, it is only when this commentary is replicated across social media that a personal choice appears – to share or not to share.

Indeed, there is so much content posted on social and mobile messaging services, it is nigh-on impossible to calculate how much is physically shared.

It is safe to say, however, that with over three billion active Facebook users in 2025 and roughly 99 million X users in the United States alone, the potential audience is vast.

Which raises interesting questions – exactly why are people sharing political discourse in the first place and when are they likely to share true and false content on social media?

Sergei Guriev, Dean of London Business School and Professor of Economics, says his research, which includes Curtailing False News, Amplifying Truth, explores three main motives for sharing.

“We analysed and measured three reasons for sharing. The first one is, ‘I want to share the information, and I want to maintain my reputation of a being a knowledgeable person.’

“The next one is, ‘I want to convince you.’ – in simple terms, this is about political persuasion.

“And the third one would be, ‘I want to share this information to communicate my political preferences.’

“We have developed a theoretical model of these three motives and have compared this theory with the data. We have shown that the first two motives are consistent with the data.”

“The third motive of signalling your political beliefs, even if it exists, is weaker than the political persuasion,” Guriev explains.

Stop spreading the false news

Talking about his most recent research, Guriev says he and his coauthors wanted to develop a comprehensive framework that would offer workable solutions to slow down misinformation on social media.

“We wanted to pin down the mechanisms,” Guriev states. “We wanted to understand how we can use different methods for slowing down misinformation on social media, how those mechanisms function, [and] how and why different methods compete and compare to each other.”

Misinformation awareness, fact checking, confirmation clicks, and content consideration prompts were all experimented with, and, perhaps surprisingly, the simplest method (a content-neutral ‘health warning’) proved the most effective.

Before sharing, users were shown the message, “Please think carefully before you repost. Remember that there is a significant amount of false news circulating on social media.” They were then found to be less likely to share false content, and sharing trueful content did not decline - it grew.

This an important lesson for those in management and leadership positions.

“I think the important thing here is you should avoid knee-jerk reaction to content,” recommends Guriev.

“You should remember that there is a lot of false and misleading and fuzzy content circulating, and if you want to react to any piece of news, any bit of information, give yourself time to reflect.

“So, think about this: our informational environment is becoming increasingly complex, and you must give yourself time (even a very short time) to think what you are about to share.

“It is almost like a health warning you get on cigarette packets or on a beer bottle - it's a content neutral message in that it doesn't really talk about what kind of post you're about to share, it just makes you think about the implications of sharing false content for your reputation with the audience.

“In addition to this health warning message, we trialled several other interventions, but none of them was as effective. For example, we told some users that for certain posts to be shared, there is fact checking. Of course, fact checking is only available for posts which are likely to be false, so it is a very strong message.

“So, it is not surprising that this message slowed down sharing of false news. However, we found it also slowed down the dissemination of true news, probably because of the mental effort that goes into thinking about [the message] and eventually people just run away from sharing.”

The third and fourth options – a further confirmation click and a prompt requesting the user check the veracity themselves – also reduced the sharing of false content but marginally decreased the sharing of true content as well.

Ultimately, it was this simple ‘health warning’ screening prompt which was most successful in slowing the spread of false news.

Implications for business

While this research focused on political information on social media, Guriev and his co-authors believe that it is relevant for corporate environments where propagation of misleading and false information can result in making wrong business decisions.

Studying political information is easier than corporate information as preferences and choices are more straightforward to define and measure, and messages are easier to understand and communicate for large groups of study participants, according to Guriev. But the mechanics of information transmission is the same: too often business leaders communicate straight away, without reflection and deliberation.

“A lot of people are very proud of responding to emails quickly,” reasons Guriev.

A personal project

Hailing from Russia and having had to leave the country back in 2013, research into curtailing the spreading of false information is clearly important to Guriev.

“For me and my wife (Ekaterina Zhuravskaya – BP Centennial Professor at London School of Economics and Professor of Economics at Paris School of Economics), since we left Russia, we always were interested in how propaganda actually works, how misinformation convinces people and when it may backfire.

“Interestingly, while doing this research we found true news can backfire as well (Barrera, Guriev, Henry, and Zhuravskaya, 2020).

“The main question for us was: ‘Why and how misleading reports and statements actually convince people to change their mind and support political movements that are likely to hurt the very same voters?’”

While sharing misinformation on social media may not seem like overly consequential to each individual user, collectively it is a huge issue.

“The spread of misinformation on social media is a major policy issue,” he says. “Social scientists widely agree that democracy relies on well-informed voters. Yet, false political news disseminates widely on social media, and it can be highly persuasive, while an increasing number of people worldwide rely on social media for political news.

“This leads to a growing concern that, if not curtailed, misinformation on social media could potentially result in distorted political outcomes, heightened affective polarisation, political turmoil, an escalation of hate crimes, and the amplification of systemic health risks.”

Through this research, it becomes clear that each and every method that reduces the chances of false information shared on social media has the potential to have positive, real-world consequences.

Or as Guriev says: “We don't only want to slow down falseness. We also want to protect the dissemination of true news.”