A recent experimental study conducted by LIRNEasia in Sri Lanka explored people’s ability to accurately assess the truthfulness of information — and found that this ability varies significantly depending on the topic. The study focused on three types of information: climate change, economic, and ethno-religious issues.
Participants were asked to classify 12 cue cards related to climate change as true, mostly true, mostly false, or false. This classification process took place in three phases throughout the study.
In the first phase (baseline evaluation), participants arrived at the test center and were asked to classify 40 cue cards (including the climate-related ones).
Next, they were randomly assigned to one of five interventions. The interventions were in-person training, educational video, e-game, exposure to a fact-checking WhatsApp group, and fact-checking website.
Figure 1: Experimental study participants are assigned for interventions
After completing their assigned intervention (immediate post-evaluation phase), participants classified a new set of 40 cue cards.
Finally, two weeks later (14-day post-evaluation phase), participants completed a third round of classification at home using another new set of cards.
Participants received higher scores when they correctly classified the cards — for example, marking true cards as true or false cards as false. Scores could range from a minimum of 20 to a maximum of 120. Improvements were measured in two ways: short-term (baseline to immediate post-evaluation) and medium-term (baseline to 14-day evaluation).
Interestingly, results showed noticeable differences in participants’ ability to classify information depending on the topic. Their ability to accurately assess climate-related information was significantly lower than for economic or ethno-religious content.
Figure 2: Improvement of scores by information theme
This raises an important question: Is it inherently more difficult for people to identify misinformation related to climate change? The study suggests this might be the case and points to the need for further research on why climate misinformation is particularly challenging to detect.
When analyzing results by intervention type, none of the five approaches improved participants’ ability to classify climate-related information. In fact, both short-term and long-term improvements for climate information were negative.
Figure 3: Short-term and long-term improvements for climate information
This finding challenges the widely held belief that conventional interventions are effective against climate misinformation. It underscores the need for innovative approaches tailored specifically to this issue.
In summary, LIRNEasia’s experimental study highlights that people find it especially difficult to identify climate-related misinformation — and that current intervention methods may not only be ineffective but could even have a negative impact. This critical insight points to an urgent need for new strategies to strengthen public resilience against climate misinformation in Sri Lanka.
The experimental study was conducted with 802 Sinhala news consumers in the Eastern, Southern, and Western provinces of Sri Lanka from December 2024 to January 2025.
