Debunking Misinformation About Genetically Modified Food Safety on Social Media: Can Heuristic Cues Mitigate Biased Assimilation?

Focusing on debunking misinformation about genetically modified (GM) food safety in a social media context, this study examines whether source cues and social endorsement cues interact with individuals’ preexisting beliefs about GM food safety in influencing misinformation correction effectiveness. Using an experimental design, this study finds that providing corrective messages can effectively counteract the influence of misinformation, especially when the message is from an expert source and receives high social endorsements. Participants evaluate misinformation and corrective messages in a biased way that confirms their preexisting beliefs about GM food safety. However, their initial misperceptions can be reduced when receiving corrective messages.

The Effects of Warning Labels and Social Endorsement Cues on Credibility Perceptions of and Engagement Intentions with Fake News

Fake news spreading virally on social media platforms is a topic of high societal and political relevance. Therefore, platforms have been experimenting with different measures of intervention. However, research on their effectiveness is still limited and dispositional factors are often neglected. We tested two promising interventions – adding warning labels and removing social endorsement cues (i.e., likes) – while including socio-demographic and psychological dispositions based on prior research as controls. Data from an online experiment (N = 591) shows that warning labels significantly reduced credibility perceptions of a fake news post on climate change and respective amplification intentions (i.e., liking and sharing), whereas removing social endorsement cues below a post did not have an impact. Further, credibility perceptions were associated with users’ political orientation. Amplification intentions differed depending on participants’ educational level, political leaning, and analytic thinking style, whereas the willingness to elaborate more carefully about the post varied with their age, the involvement with the topic of the fake news, and their political leaning. Our findings contribute to the research required to craft effective interventions against the spread of misinformation and identify vulnerable users.

Understanding Users Attitude to Social Endorsement Advertising of Embarrassing Product

Users on social media have increased rapidly in recent years, social media advertising has become a popular marketing tool for companies to promote their products. A feature of social media advertising is that marketers can use customers' online behavior to create customized advertisements, which are also known as targeting ads. In this study, we conducted experimental testing 2 (advertising type) X2 (product type) to see if increased knowledge of social advertising would influence users' attitudes towards ads. We separated two different types of advertising on Facebook, namely remarketing and social support, and two different types of products, which advertised general products and ads about embarrassing products. The results of this study are that the increase in advertising knowledge is able to (1) affect the perceived value of advertisements from different types of products and (2) different types of advertisements do not affect user attitudes towards advertisements. For future research, we recommend focusing primarily on the demographic and environmental variables of digital advertising users about embarrassing products.

Online Social Endorsement and Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in the United Kingdom

We explore the implications of online social endorsement for the Covid-19 vaccination program in the United Kingdom. Vaccine hesitancy is a long-standing problem, but it has assumed great urgency due to the pandemic. By early 2021, the United Kingdom had the world’s highest Covid-19 mortality per million of population. Our survey of a nationally representative sample of UK adults ( N = 5,114) measured socio-demographics, social and political attitudes, media diet for getting news about Covid-19, and intention to use social media and personal messaging apps to encourage or discourage vaccination against Covid-19. Cluster analysis identified six distinct media diet groups: news avoiders, mainstream/official news samplers, super seekers, omnivores, the social media dependent, and the TV dependent. We assessed whether these media diets, together with key attitudes, including Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy, conspiracy mentality, and the news-finds-me attitude (meaning giving less priority to active monitoring of news and relying more on one’s online networks of friends for information), predict the intention to encourage or discourage vaccination. Overall, super-seeker and omnivorous media diets are more likely than other media diets to be associated with the online encouragement of vaccination. Combinations of (a) news avoidance and high levels of the news-finds-me attitude and (b) social media dependence and high levels of conspiracy mentality are most likely to be associated with online discouragement of vaccination. In the direct statistical model, a TV-dependent media diet is more likely to be associated with online discouragement of vaccination, but the moderation model shows that a TV-dependent diet most strongly attenuates the relationship between vaccine hesitancy and discouraging vaccination. Our findings support public health communication based on four main methods. First, direct contact, through the post, workplace, or community structures, and through phone counseling via local health services, could reach the news avoiders. Second, TV public information advertisements should point to authoritative information sources, such as National Health Service (NHS) and other public health websites, which should then feature clear and simple ways for people to share material among their online social networks. Third, informative social media campaigns will provide super seekers with good resources to share, while also encouraging the social media dependent to browse away from social media platforms and visit reliable and authoritative online sources. Fourth, social media companies should expand and intensify their removal of vaccine disinformation and anti-vax accounts, and such efforts should be monitored by well-resourced, independent organizations.