Social media users who like to share information usually don't bother to think about whether they are spreading truth or falsehood. This is shown by an analysis by David Rand from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Participants were asked if they would share true and untrue headlines. They were 35 percent worse at distinguishing between truth and falsehood than before when they were only asked to judge the truth of headlines. Participants were also 18 percent less successful at identifying fake news when asked immediately after the review whether they wanted to share the information.
Social Media: Sharing can be dangerous
“Just asking if they want to share information makes people more susceptible to falling for scams. Sharing seems to confuse them,” Rand said. While people's willingness to share news content and their ability to assess its truthfulness can be strengthened separately, the study suggests that at least the plausibility test weakens when it comes to sharing.
Researchers conducted two online surveys of 3,157 Americans whose demographic characteristics matched U.S. averages for age, gender, ethnicity and geographic distribution. All participants used Twitter or Facebook. People were shown a series of true and false headlines about politics and the COVID-19 pandemic and were randomly assigned to two groups.
Sometimes they were only asked about accuracy or only about sharing content. At other times they were asked about both, in different orders. From this survey design, the researchers were able to determine the effect that the question about sharing content has on judgments of truthfulness.
Two hypotheses tested
The researchers wanted to test two hypotheses with their experiment. One was that asking about the desire to share makes people more critical of the truth because they don't want to share misleading news. The other hypothesis was that asking people whether they want to share a particular piece of information distracts them so that they no longer value verification.
So recipients of such information are more likely to expect to receive a lot of nonsense. Party political preferences in the USA also play a role. When it came to COVID-19 headlines, Republicans, whose then-President Donald Trump was at least temporarily a Corona denier, were more willing to spread false reports unchecked than Democrats.
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