00:04You're watching Euronews' fact-checking show The Cube.
00:07These days on social media, anyone can present themselves as an expert, and they don't need any proof to back
00:13this up.
00:13As mistrust in experts becomes increasingly common, some social media users are finding ways to reach a wide audience to
00:20spread conspiracy theories and online misinformation.
00:23We spoke to researchers who focused on a sample group in the US before zooming out to assess the wider
00:28impact of these kinds of social media trends.
00:31We found that the most trusted source people have is a celebrity expert, that combination.
00:38So if there's a celebrity doctor, someone who is a White House advisor and has millions of followers and is
00:45a doctor, that person has the highest credibility.
00:47Someone who is just a celebrity, not an expert. They have the second highest credibility.
00:53The third are people who have professional titles in their bios.
00:57The thing is, anyone can have any title on Instagram. I can call myself microbiologist. I'm not.
01:03Researchers warn that it only takes a few social media posts for users to form strong opinions on a topic
01:09they know nothing about.
01:10The threshold for people to start believing that they are experts is very low.
01:15If you are exposed to five to seven consistent information points, you start acting like an expert.
01:22So whether that information that you are getting is true or false does not matter.
01:27Information which is legitimate and provides further important context, but which reaches social media users later on, risks having very
01:34little impact on people's opinions.
01:36You become an expert and once you start thinking like that, you believe every other piece of information that is
01:42fact checking or questioning your beliefs as an attack on your personality, as an attack on your core health beliefs,
01:48and your own beliefs get stronger and stronger. It doesn't get weaker.
01:51atti intimates
01:54Some people say no.
01:56Some people say no.
01:56They can be productive andѐando in the meal so people can find them in biology.
01:56Their youth is not doing any change here anyway.
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