Misinformation Identification and Correction

This chapter considers crisis communication as a framework, and reviews how the correction of social media misinformation remains a particularly important strategy for mitigating the negative effects of misinformation during a crisis situation. The spread of misinformation on social media presents challenges for effective crisis management, and the field of crisis communication is still adjusting to the era of social media. Correction can take many different forms, but the two most common types of correction are logic-based and fact-based corrections. Correction represents an important strategy for combating misinformation. The correction of beliefs and behaviors during a crisis can be approached from cognitive, social, and emotional perspectives. The chapter concludes by considering the limitations of corrective efforts and where future work is needed to better unite the fields of correction with crisis communication. Crisis communication can benefit from the evolving understanding of how to correct misinformation, especially in our age of social media.