References to unbiased sources increase the helpfulness of community fact-checks

Abstract: Community-based fact-checking is a promising approach to address misinformation on social media at scale. However, an understanding of what makes community-created fact-checks helpful to users is still in its infancy. In this paper, we analyze the determinants of the helpfulness of community-created fact-checks. For this purpose, we draw upon a unique dataset of real-world community-created fact-checks and helpfulness ratings from X's (formerly Twitter) Community Notes platform. Our empirical analysis implies that the key determinant of helpfulness in community-based fact-checking is whether users provide links to external sources to underpin their assertions. On average, the odds for community-created fact-checks to be perceived as helpful are 2.70 times higher if they provide links to external sources. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the helpfulness of community-created fact-checks varies depending on their level of political bias. Here, we find that community-created fact-checks linking to high-bias sources (of either political side) are perceived as significantly less helpful. This suggests that the rating mechanism on the Community Notes platform successfully penalizes one-sidedness and politically motivated reasoning. These findings have important implications for social media platforms, which can utilize our results to optimize their community-based fact-checking systems.