scholarly journals The Role of Source Credibility and Message Credibility in Fake News Engagement. Perspectives from an Experimental Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3 (41)) ◽  
pp. 42-62
Author(s):  
Diana NEDELCU ◽  
◽  
Delia Cristina BLABAN ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Source Credibility ◽  
Fake News ◽  
False Information ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
Financial Benefits ◽  
Media Reputation ◽  
A Chain ◽  
Effects Of Media

Nowadays controversial stories, conspiracy theories, or false information are massively shared on social media. Fake news is supported by the online environment because it generates traffic and financial benefits (Tandoc et al., 2018). It is a chain — users share the news on their feed, then they receive the same type of content, later on, creating the illusion of veracity through popularity. Media credibility becomes more and more relevant in the context of the proliferation of fake news. The present paper addresses the mediating role of source and message credibility in relationship with the engagement with ‘poor journalistic’ content. We aimed to identify the effects of media reputation and of the facticity of the news on (digital) behavior such as the intent to disseminate or to comment on fake news on social media and also on discussing these contents with friends. For this purpose, we applied a 2x2 between subjects online experiment by manipulating the (1) the source (high vs. low reputation online media outlets) and (2) information facticity (high vs. low). Participants (N=177), aged 18 to 53 years were selected via Facebook and the study was carried out in February 2020. The results of our research are in line with previous literature that underlined the role of source and message credibility in influencing online and offline news engagement. We observed that source credibility has an impact on news sharing on Facebook and that message credibility encourages discussion with friends. This applies to both veridical and false information. The most important takeaway of our study is perhaps that users are aware that high reputation media outlets can make mistakes. Besides, media reputation is subject to change and is related to the audiences.

scholarly journals Perceived truth of statements and simulated social media postings: an experimental investigation of source credibility, repeated exposure, and presentation format

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Nadarevic ◽  
Rolf Reber ◽  
Anne Josephine Helmecke ◽  
Dilara Köse
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Source Credibility ◽  
Repeated Exposure ◽  
Presentation Format ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Additive Effects ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Source Information ◽  
Internet Age

Abstract To better understand the spread of fake news in the Internet age, it is important to uncover the variables that influence the perceived truth of information. Although previous research identified several reliable predictors of truth judgments—such as source credibility, repeated information exposure, and presentation format—little is known about their simultaneous effects. In a series of four experiments, we investigated how the abovementioned factors jointly affect the perceived truth of statements (Experiments 1 and 2) and simulated social media postings (Experiments 3 and 4). Experiment 1 explored the role of source credibility (high vs. low vs. no source information) and presentation format (with vs. without a picture). In Experiments 2 and 3, we additionally manipulated repeated exposure (yes vs. no). Finally, Experiment 4 examined the role of source credibility (high vs. low) and type of repetition (congruent vs. incongruent vs. no repetition) in further detail. In sum, we found no effect of presentation format on truth judgments, but strong, additive effects of source credibility and repetition. Truth judgments were higher for information presented by credible sources than non-credible sources and information without sources. Moreover, congruent (i.e., verbatim) repetition increased perceived truth whereas semantically incongruent repetition decreased perceived truth, irrespectively of the source. Our findings show that people do not rely on a single judgment cue when evaluating a statement’s truth but take source credibility and their meta-cognitive feelings into account.

scholarly journals The influence of social media on purchase intention: The mediating role of brand equity

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1944008
Author(s):  
Mohammed Majeed ◽  
Martin Owusu-Ansah ◽  
Adu-Ansere Ashmond
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Brand Equity ◽  
Purchase Intention ◽  
Mediating Role

scholarly journals Intelligent Detection of False Information in Arabic Tweets Utilizing Hybrid Harris Hawks Based Feature Selection and Machine Learning Models

Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 556
Author(s):  
Thaer Thaher ◽  
Mahmoud Saheb ◽  
Hamza Turabieh ◽  
Hamouda Chantar
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Feature Selection ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
User Profile ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Classification Model ◽  
Fake News ◽  
False Information ◽  
Social Media Platforms

Fake or false information on social media platforms is a significant challenge that leads to deliberately misleading users due to the inclusion of rumors, propaganda, or deceptive information about a person, organization, or service. Twitter is one of the most widely used social media platforms, especially in the Arab region, where the number of users is steadily increasing, accompanied by an increase in the rate of fake news. This drew the attention of researchers to provide a safe online environment free of misleading information. This paper aims to propose a smart classification model for the early detection of fake news in Arabic tweets utilizing Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, Machine Learning (ML) models, and Harris Hawks Optimizer (HHO) as a wrapper-based feature selection approach. Arabic Twitter corpus composed of 1862 previously annotated tweets was utilized by this research to assess the efficiency of the proposed model. The Bag of Words (BoW) model is utilized using different term-weighting schemes for feature extraction. Eight well-known learning algorithms are investigated with varying combinations of features, including user-profile, content-based, and words-features. Reported results showed that the Logistic Regression (LR) with Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) model scores the best rank. Moreover, feature selection based on the binary HHO algorithm plays a vital role in reducing dimensionality, thereby enhancing the learning model’s performance for fake news detection. Interestingly, the proposed BHHO-LR model can yield a better enhancement of 5% compared with previous works on the same dataset.

scholarly journals How Can Psychological Science Help Counter the Spread of Fake News?

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sander van der Linden ◽  
Jon Roozenbeek ◽  
Rakoen Maertens ◽  
Melisa Basol ◽  
Ondřej Kácha ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
Source Credibility ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Intervention Effectiveness ◽  
Motivated Cognition ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
The Individual

Abstract In recent years, interest in the psychology of fake news has rapidly increased. We outline the various interventions within psychological science aimed at countering the spread of fake news and misinformation online, focusing primarily on corrective (debunking) and pre-emptive (prebunking) approaches. We also offer a research agenda of open questions within the field of psychological science that relate to how and why fake news spreads and how best to counter it: the longevity of intervention effectiveness; the role of sources and source credibility; whether the sharing of fake news is best explained by the motivated cognition or the inattention accounts; and the complexities of developing psychometrically validated instruments to measure how interventions affect susceptibility to fake news at the individual level.

Understanding destination evangelism: a social media viewpoint

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Purvendu Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Information Seeking ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Structural Equation Models ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
Information Seeking Behaviors ◽  
Role Of Information

PurposeThe present research aims to introduce and understand the promising nature of destination evangelism in the context of social media-based tourism communities (SMTCs). Further, factors that influence evangelism and information-seeking behaviors on SMTCs are examined.Design/methodology/approachA conceptual model is developed that features an interplay of destination distinctiveness, destination evangelism, travel commitment and information-seeking engagement. Data were collected from 215 active users of SMTCs and analyzed using structural equation models.FindingsThe research findings indicate that destination distinctiveness and information-seeking positively lead to destination evangelism. Information-seeking is found to mediate the relationship between (1) destination evangelism and travel commitment and (2) destination evangelism and distinctiveness.Research limitations/implicationsThe research offers meaningful insights into exploring constituents of destination evangelism. The research also understands and highlights the critical role of information-seeking engagement about distinct destinations.Practical implicationsThis research highlights key areas to build, improve and inspire destination evangelism on SMTCs.Originality/valueThis study offers a fresh contribution to tourism literature by investigating destination evangelism and its drivers. This is explained by closely uniting vital research streams of evangelism, tourism and engagement. It further highlights the dual mediating role of information seeking, suggesting that these engagements are critical to evangelizing destinations.

scholarly journals Beyond “fake news”: The role of analytic thinking in the detection of inaccuracy and partisan bias in news headlines

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M Ross ◽  
David Gertler Rand ◽  
Gordon Pennycook
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Analytic Thinking ◽  
Total N ◽  
Partisan Bias ◽  
News Content ◽  
Political Bias ◽  
Political Partisanship ◽  
News Headlines

Why is misleading partisan content believed and shared? An influential account posits that political partisanship pervasively biases reasoning, such that engaging in analytic thinking exacerbates motivated reasoning and, in turn, the acceptance of hyperpartisan content. Alternatively, it may be that susceptibility to hyperpartisan misinformation is explained by a lack of reasoning. Across two studies using different subject pools (total N = 1977), we had participants assess true, false, and hyperpartisan headlines taken from social media. We found no evidence that analytic thinking was associated with increased polarization for either judgments about the accuracy of the headlines or willingness to share the news content on social media. Instead, analytic thinking was broadly associated with an increased capacity to discern between true headlines and either false or hyperpartisan headlines. These results suggest that reasoning typically helps people differentiate between low and high quality news content, rather than facilitating political bias.

scholarly journals Falling in Love With Work: The Effect of Enterprise Social Media on Thriving at Work

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
DongXu Liu ◽  
Beigang Hou ◽  
Yuanyuan Liu ◽  
Pingqing Liu
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Enterprise Social Media ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
Work Tasks ◽  
Social Tasks ◽  
Media Applications ◽  
Positive Effect

Using a survey of 300 employees in different types of enterprises and different positions, this study verified that the use of enterprise social media has a positive effect on employees’ work exuberance. The study separately examined the effects of social media applications for work tasks and social tasks. Both types of applications had a positive impact on employees’ work exuberance. The study also identified the mediating role of challenge and obstructive stressors in this relationship. Work-related social media applications enhanced employees’ exuberance by reducing obstructive stressors, and social-related social media applications enhanced employees’ exuberance by reducing challenge stressors. The implications of these findings are that managers should pay attention to the use of enterprise social media, especially for social tasks, as this can enhance employees’ sense of exuberance.

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