Misinformation remains a threat to democracies worldwide. Studies show that a range of interventions – such as exposure to fact-checked information and media literacy training – can inoculate people against misinformation. However, others point to these interventions having unintended effects, including fostering news skepticism and distrust in political institutions. In this study we assess an alternative intervention that should improve people’s ability to identify inaccurate information but not increase skepticism nor distrust towards political institutions: a high-quality news boost. We embed this intervention in a 2-wave panel survey in Spain and Romania, where participants are asked in both waves to rate the accuracy of eight claims, balanced by veracity, ideology, and two topics (immigration and climate change). For four weeks, we ask participants to read a high-quality mainstream news outlet. We then compare between-wave changes in their misperceptions (belief in false information), skepticism (doubting true information), and trust in democratic actors (government, the news, journalists, and scientists), to those of a control group and of two other groups exposed to traditional inoculation strategies: fact-checked information and digital media literacy training.
