Social endorsement cues (SEC) offer information about how online users have engaged and evaluated online content. Some view that SEC thus can serve as useful heuristics when users evaluate the credibility of news content on social media. At the same time, SEC can be manipulated by a variety of commercial and political actors on social media. This study examines whether SEC influence individuals' credibility judgments of political news on social media, and how the salience of concerns that SEC can be manipulated by others can undermine the perceived credibility. Using an experiment, we found that SEC had a negative influence on news credibility, regardless of whether or not SEC manipulability concerns were primed. An independent effect of SEC manipulability concerns was also found, such that priming thoughts about the manipulability of SEC led participants to rate the news post as less credible, regardless of whether that post included SEC. These results suggest a spillover effect whereby concerns over the manipulation of SEC can create doubt about the authenticity of other cues from the news (e.g., source and message), and lead to perceptions that news shared on social media can be manipulated more generally.

中文翻译：

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社会认可线索和可操纵性问题对新闻可信度感知的影响

社会认可线索 (SEC) 提供有关在线用户如何参与和评估在线内容的信息。一些人认为，当用户评估社交媒体上新闻内容的可信度时，SEC 可以作为有用的启发式方法。同时，SEC 可以被社交媒体上的各种商业和政治参与者操纵。本研究考察 SEC 是否影响个人对社交媒体上政治新闻的可信度判断，以及 SEC 可能被他人操纵的担忧的显着性如何破坏感知可信度。通过一个实验，我们发现 SEC 有一个负面的对新闻可信度的影响，无论是否引发了 SEC 可操纵性问题。还发现了 SEC 可操纵性问题的独立影响，例如，关于 SEC 可操纵性的初步想法导致参与者认为该新闻帖子的可信度较低，无论该帖子是否包含 SEC。这些结果表明存在溢出效应，即对 SEC 操纵的担忧可能会导致对来自新闻的其他线索（例如，来源和消息）的真实性产生怀疑，并导致人们认为社交媒体上共享的新闻可以更普遍地被操纵。