But a new study by a team of researchers shows the opposite occurs: Searching to evaluate the truthfulness of false news articles actually increases the probability of believing misinformation.

"Our study shows that the act of searching online to evaluate news increases belief in highly popular misinformation—and by notable amounts," says Zeve Sanderson, founding executive director of New York University's Center for Social Media and Politics (CSMaP) and one of the paper's authors.

The reason for this outcome may be explained by search-engine outputs—in the study, the researchers found that this phenomenon is concentrated among individuals for whom search engines return lower-quality information.

Across the five studies, the authors found that the act of searching online to evaluate news led to a statistically significant increase in belief in misinformation. This occurred whether it was shortly after the publication of misinformation or months later.

This finding suggests that the passage of time—and ostensibly opportunities for fact checks to enter the information ecosystem—does not lessen the impact of SOTEN on increasing the likelihood of believing false news stories to be true. Moreover, the fifth study showed that this phenomenon is concentrated among individuals for whom search engines return lower-quality information.