Social Media Fake News Awareness

 Sharing of fake news on social media platforms is a global concern, with research offering little insight into the motives behind such sharing. This study adopts a mixed-method approach to explore fake-news sharing behavior . To begin with, qualitative data from 58 open-ended essays was analyzed to identify six behavioral manifestations associated with sharing fake news. Thereafter, research model hypothesizing the association between these behaviors was proposed using the honeycomb framework and the third-person effect hypothesis. Age and gender were the control variables. Two data sets obtained from cross-sectional surveys with 471 and 374 social media users were utilized to test the proposed model. The study results suggest that instantaneous sharing of news for creating awareness had positive effect on sharing fake news due to lack of time and religiosity. However, authenticating news before sharing had no effect on sharing fake news due to lack of time and religiosity. The study results also suggest that social media users who engage in active corrective action are unlikely to share fake news due to lack of time. These results have significant theoretical and practical implications.

Social media is an almost unavoidable part of our society now—can it be a trusted news source? Not always. Here are some ways to differentiate between misinformation and disinformation on social media, identify “fake news,” and stay accurately informed.

Misinformation vs. disinformation

When looking at what constitutes “fake news” and how it gets shared on social media, there are two kinds of false information to be aware of—misinformation and disinformation. Researchers at Indiana University found these two types of information often go viral because “information overload and users' finite attention span limit the capacity of social media to discriminate information on the basis of quality.”
Because social media is a public platform, anyone—including news outlets—can post anything without being accountable for fact-checking. It’s left to users to distinguish misinformation vs. disinformation in their feeds.

Misinformation

What differentiates misinformation from disinformation is the intent of the person or outlet sharing it. In the previously cited study from Indiana University, misinformation is classified as “false or misleading content including hoaxes, conspiracy theories, fabricated reports, click-bait headlines, and even satire.” Misinformation is not deliberately intended to deceive. Instead, it aims to shape or change public opinion on a given topic.

Disinformation

Disinformation can be spread using many of the same tactics as misinformation—hoaxes, click-bait, fabricated reports. Disinformation is created to deceive. Chadwick and Vaccari’s study found that 24.8% of their respondents shared a news story they either thought was made up when they saw it or knew was exaggerated.
There are a variety of reasons that individuals’ social media accounts or even business accounts might spread disinformation. It could be to increase their social media marketing effectiveness, boost their online traffic, build more followers for their page or business, incite an emotional response, or create a distraction.
Disinformation can be dangerous on social media because, as previously mentioned, the sheer amount of information there and the length of readers’ attention spans can allow it to go unchecked.