Falsehood and satire on social media: does partisan-motivated reasoning influence fake news sharing?

ABSTRACT

This study seeks to uncover the mechanism of partisan-motivated reasoning acting on fake news evaluation and social media sharing through an online experiment. We found that, although political identification influences trustworthiness of news source and perceived levels of satire in fake news, Democrats view news outlets as more trustworthy than Republicans, and Republicans view fake news as more satirical than Democrats. We determined that political congruence or incongruence does not affect subjects’ ratings of veracity of fake news, which showed accuracy-motivated reasoning surpassed directional-motivated reasoning in the veracity evaluation process. This may be because trustworthiness and satire are types of information that are tied more closely to directional-motivated reasoning. For news diffusion, political identification and satire play a more important role in social media sharing. People are more likely to share satire. Moreover, Republicans tend to view fake news as more cynical and share fake news with a larger audience.

KEYWORDS:

• Fake news
• social media
• partisanship
• politics
• multigroup SEM analysis

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to my research assistant, Lefan Xiong, whose exceptional support was critical to the success of this research. She provided valuable insights, expertise, and excellent execution of the experimental design in Qualtrics, including workflow setup, experimental condition randomization, and participant filtering. Her excellent data analytical skills ensured the reliability and generalizability of the findings by meticulously excluding inconsistent responses. Her hard work and dedication during the course of this research study are greatly appreciated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. http://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/pj_14–10-21_mediapolarization-01/, retrieved Jan. 31, 2019.

2. http://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/pj_14–10-21_mediapolarization-01/, retrieved Jan. 31, 2019.

3. https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2014/10/21/section-1-media-sources-distinct-favorites-emerge-on-the-left-and-right/

4. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/appendix-a-the-ideological-consistency-scale/, received retrieved Jan. 31, 2019.