I'm not totally sure I would accept these results without some sort of follow-up study, but the first indications are interesting. The authors of the study (27 page PDF) observe that "people are generally capable of judging the accuracy of the headlines" and that " ideology doesn't really seem to be a major factor in driving judgements on whether a headline was accurate." But when it came to sharing, "politics played a big role, and the truth receded." Now that may seem like the opposite of the headline (and it is!) but what the authors did was to nudge a sample population (namely, contributors to Breitbart and InfoWars) by reminding them that they thought accuracy is important, which changed their behaviour. So the conclusion was that "people do value accuracy but don't necessarily think much about it when they're using social media." Or maybe, they don't care whether the headline is accurate unless they think they're being watched.
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