ABSTRACT
The literature has identified many challenges of misinformation correction. Scholars have proposed that the success of misinformation correction relies on the provision of a coherent and compelling alternative explanation that replaces the mental model established by misinformation. Narratives are considered a promising tool due to their unique way of portraying a complete course of events suggesting causal relationships between characters’ actions and outcomes, and their abilities to elicit engagement and reduce counterarguing. However, the accumulated empirical evidence has suggested that the effects of narrative correction are conditioned by other contextual or message factors. In this study, we evaluate how correction placement moderates the effects of narrative correctives in correcting anti-vaccine misinformation. An online experiment with a 2 (correction message format: narrative vs. nonnarrative) × 2 (correction placement: prebunking vs. debunking) between-subjects factorial design was conducted. The results reveal that when used as a prebunking strategy, a nonnarrative message was more effective than a narrative message in resisting the influence of subsequent misinformation exposure; by comparison, when used as a debunking strategy, a narrative message was more effective than a nonnarrative message in correcting the influence of misinformation that participants viewed earlier. The findings confirm the conditional benefits of narratives in misinformation correction. Theoretical implications for narrative persuasion and misinformation research and practical implications for health campaign design are discussed.
