ABSTRACT

Several studies have examined the consumption and spread of fake news on social media. Two notable gaps, though, exist in the extant literature. First, prior research has focused on the political orientation of users while ignoring the broader context of sharing, namely the perceived political orientation of their social media peers. Second, there is limited insight about how user states, especially those related to their judgment abilities, influence the critical evaluation of fake news on social media. This paper addresses these gaps by theorizing the roles of perceived peer political orientation and self-objectivity states of users in translating biased credibility assessments of fake news into biased sharing intentions. It reports on an 7experiment (n=408) that primed self-perceived objectivity (a state) in half of the participants to examine its efficacy in moderating the influence of credibility bias (the extent to which users believe the news that highlight ideas that are consistent with their political orientation more than fake news articles that highlight ideas that are inconsistent with their political orientation) on sharing bias (the extent to which they are likely to share fake news that highlight ideas that are consistent with their political orientation more than fake news that highlight ideas that are inconsistent with their political orientation) while accounting for the moderating effect of perceived peer political orientation (a contextual factor). We found that consistency of fake news with people’s political orientation increased credibility bias and sharing bias and that credibility bias increased sharing bias. We also found that perceived alignment between a user and their peers’ political orientation, as a social context, reduced the effect of credibility bias on sharing bias. Finally, we found mixed support for the moderating effects of primed self-objectivity on the influence of credibility bias on sharing bias; it affected only liberal-leaning participants.

摘要

多项研究调查了假新闻在社交媒体上的消费和传播情况。但是，现有文献中存在两个显着的差距。首先，先前的研究集中在用户的政治取向上，而忽略了更广泛的分享背景，即社交媒体同行的感知政治取向。其次，关于用户状态，尤其是与他们的判断能力相关的状态如何影响社交媒体上对假新闻的批判性评价的见解有限。本文通过将感知到的同伴政治取向和用户的自我客观状态在将虚假新闻的有偏见的可信度评估转化为有偏见的分享意图方面的作用进行理论化来解决这些差距。我们发现假新闻与人们政治倾向的一致性会增加可信度偏见和分享偏见，而可信度偏见会增加分享偏见。我们还发现，作为社会背景，用户与其同龄人的政治取向之间的感知一致性降低了可信度偏见对分享偏见的影响。最后，我们发现了对启动的自我客观性对可信度偏见对分享偏见影响的调节作用的不同支持；它只影响自由主义倾向的参与者。我们发现对初始自我客观性对可信度偏见对分享偏见影响的调节作用的支持不一；它只影响自由主义倾向的参与者。我们发现对初始自我客观性对可信度偏见对分享偏见影响的调节作用的支持不一；它只影响自由主义倾向的参与者。