Misinformation among Migrants: Evidence from Mexico and Colombia

This paper examines the effectiveness of media literacy interventions in combating misinformation among in-transit migrants in Mexico and Colombia. We conducted experiments to study whether an established strategy for fighting misinformation works for this understudied yet particularly vulnerable population. We evaluate the effect of digital media literacy tips on migrants' ability to identify false information and their intentions to share migration-related content. We find that these interventions can effectively decrease migrants' intentions to share misleading migration-related information, with a significantly larger reduction observed for false content than accurate information. We also find that prompting participants to think about accuracy can unintentionally obscure sharing intent by acting as a nudge. Additionally, the interventions decreased trust in social media as an information source while maintaining trust in official sources. The findings suggest that incorporating digital literacy tips into official websites could be a cost-effective strategy to reduce misinformation circulation among migrant populations.