https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200709121232.htm

Now a study co-authored by MIT scholars contains bad news and good news about Covid-19 misinformation -- and a new insight that may help reduce the problem.

The bad news is that when people are consuming news on social media, their inclination to share that news with others interferes with their ability to assess its accuracy. The study presented the same false news headlines about Covid-19 to two groups of people: One group was asked if they would share those stories on social media, and the other evaluated their accuracy. The participants were 32.4 percent more likely to say they would share the headlines than they were to say those headlines were accurate.