A recent study run on Gorilla into misinformation and disinformation has been published by Max Mawby’s team at Thinks Insight and Strategy. The study presented 1650 participants with a range of social media posts, some containing fake news and AI-generated content, to investigate public reactions to political disinformation. An excellent summary of the study has been published by James Ball in the i newspaper.

The custom Social Media component built by Gorilla Studio allowed Max’s team to present interactive social media posts, allowing participants to react, share, comment and report! Every interaction was recorded by Gorilla for behavioural analysis.

This is an example social media post built in Gorilla:

Here’s how it’s set up behind the scenes in Gorilla’s Task Builder:

Thinks Insight & Strategy tested two interventions to see whether they reduced participants’ engagement rates with disinformation posts. Understanding how people interact with disinformation, and how interaction can be prevented, is vitally important for the preservation of democracy. Important for all citizens, cyber-psychologists, and election officials!

The Social Media component has been published to Gorilla Open Materials, so you can now include it in your own studies. It supports a wide range of post type, and a wide range of interaction.