News shared on social media presents multiple layers of sources, from reputable news organizations to individual users who share news on social media. A web-based experiment investigated (a) whether the influence of a primary news source (news organization) on viewers decreases as it becomes less proximate with the presence of a more immediate source (individual user who shared news), and (b) if so, how the evaluations of both sources, along with a varying degree of issue relevance, affect viewers’ agreement with news position. Participants read one news article either shared on Facebook by a well-known celebrity or directly posted onto a news website. The perceived credibility of news organizations predicted viewers’ agreement with the news position, but only when the news was presented on a news web page so that the news organization was shown as the proximate source. When multiple sources were displayed, the influence of news organization credibility disappeared when the given news lacked personal relevance.

在社交媒体上分享的新闻呈现出多层来源，从知名的新闻机构到在社交媒体上分享新闻的个人用户。一项基于网络的实验调查 (a) 主要新闻来源（新闻组织）对观众的影响是否会随着它与更直接的来源（分享新闻的个人用户）的存在变得不那么接近而降低，以及（b）如果因此，两个来源的评估以及不同程度的问题相关性如何影响观众对新闻立场的认同。参与者阅读由知名名人在 Facebook 上分享或直接发布到新闻网站上的一篇新闻文章。新闻机构的可信度预测了观众对新闻立场的认同，但只有当新闻出现在新闻网页上时，才能将新闻机构显示为最近的来源。当显示多个来源时，当给定的新闻缺乏个人相关性时，新闻机构可信度的影响就会消失。