Why Do Citizens Share COVID-19 Fact-Checks Posted by Chinese Government Social Media Accounts? The Elaboration Likelihood Model

Widespread misinformation about COVID-19 poses a significant threat to citizens long-term health and the combating of the disease. To fight the spread of misinformation, Chinese governments have used official social media accounts to participate in fact-checking activities. This study aims to investigate why citizens share fact-checks about COVID-19 and how to promote this activity. Based on the elaboration likelihood model, we explore the effects of peripheral cues (social media capital, social media strategy, media richness, and source credibility) and central cues (content theme and content importance) on the number of shares of fact-checks posted by official Chinese Government social media accounts. In total, 820 COVID-19 fact-checks from 413 Chinese Government Sina Weibo accounts were obtained and evaluated. Results show that both peripheral and central cues play important roles in the sharing of fact-checks. For peripheral cues, social media capital and media richness significantly promote the number of shares. Compared with the push strategy, both the pull strategy and networking strategy facilitate greater fact-check sharing. Fact-checks posted by Central Government social media accounts receive more shares than local government accounts. For central cues, content importance positively predicts the number of shares. In comparison to fact-checks about the latest COVID-19 news, government actions received fewer shares, while social conditions received more shares.

Understanding online health community users' information adoption intention: an elaboration likelihood model perspective

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to draw on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) to examine users' information adoption intention in online health communities (OHC).Design/methodology/approachThe authors collected 350 valid responses using a survey and conducted the moderated regression analysis to examine the research model.FindingsThe results indicated that users' information adoption intention is influenced by both central cues (argument quality) and peripheral cues (source credibility and emotional support). In addition, self-efficacy moderates the effect of both central cues and peripheral cues on information adoption intention.Originality/valuePrevious research has focused on the effect of individual motivations such as reciprocity and benefits on user behavior, and has seldom disclosed the influencing process of external factors on OHC users' behavioral decision. This research tries to fill the gap by adopting ELM to uncover the mechanism underlying OHC users' information adoption.

Social and non-social cuing of attention in a realistic space.

This study aimed to investigate the facilitatory versus inhibitory effects of dynamic non-predictive central cues presented in a realistic environment. Realistic human-avatars initiated eye contact and then dynamically looked to the left, right or centre of a table. A moving stick served as a non-social control cue and participants localised (Experiment 1) or discriminated (Experiment 2) a contextually relevant target (teapot/ teacup). The cues movement took 500ms and stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA, 150ms/ 300ms/ 500ms/ 1000ms) were measured from movement initiation. Similar cuing effects were seen for the social avatar and non-social stick cue across tasks. Results showed facilitatory processes without inhibition, though there was some variation by SOA and task. This is the first time facilitatory versus inhibitory processes have been directly investigated where eye contact is initiated prior to gaze shift. These dynamic stimuli allow a better understanding of how attention might be cued in more realistic environments.

Mnemonic Attention in Analogy to Perceptual Attention: Harmony but Not Uniformity

It is widely accepted that peripheral cues in perception capture attention automatically, while central cues need voluntary control to exert functions. However, whether they differ similarly in working memory remains unclear. The present study addressed this issue through 5 experiments using a retro-cue paradigm with more than two hundred participants. Similar to perceptual attention, we found peripheral cues in working memory (1) were more effective than central cues in low memory-load conditions (Experiments 1 and 2), and (2) they influenced performance much faster than central cues (Experiment 5). Unlike perceptual attention, peripheral cues in working memory (1) did not capture attention to memory representations when they are uninformative (Experiment 3), and (2) could raise confidence ratings (Experiment 4). Taken together, our findings suggest that the effects of spatial cues on memory versus perception are similar but not the same.

Central and Peripheral Cues to Difficulty in a Dynamic Task

Objective: We used this experiment to determine the degree to which cues to difficulty are used to make judgments of difficulty (JODs). Background: Traditional approaches involve seeking to standardize the information people used to evaluate subjective workload; however, it is likely that conscious and unconscious cues underlie peoples’ JODs. Method: We designed a video game task that tested the degree to which time-on-task, performance-based feedback, and central cues to difficulty informed JODs. These relationships were modeled along five continuous dimensions of difficulty. Results: Central cues most strongly contributed to JODs; judgments were supplemented by peripheral cues (performance-based feedback and time-on-task) even though these cues were not always valid. In addition, participants became more likely to rate the task as “easier” over time. Conclusion: Although central cues are strong predictors of task difficulty, people confuse task difficulty (central cues), effort allocation and skill (performance-based feedback), and proxy cues to difficulty (time) when making JODs. Application: Identifying the functional relationships between cues to difficulty and JODs will provide valuable insight regarding the information that people use to evaluate tasks and to make decisions.