Share to Stop the Harm: How Social Media Metrics Drive Sharing of Fact-Checking Messages via First-Person Perception

ABSTRACT

While fact-checking has received much attention as an important tool to address the prevalence of misinformation, how to ensure fact-checking messages spread as far and wide as misinformation remains to be studied. To fill this gap, this study examined when people decide to share fact-checking messages on social media and what psychological mechanisms underlie such a decision. Two experiments revealed that fact-checking messages debunking a viral misinformation post (i.e. liked, shared, and commented on many times) were perceived to be more socially desirable as compared to fact-checking messages discrediting a non-viral misinformation post. Individuals presumed greater influence of the socially desirable fact-checking messages on themselves than others (i.e. greater first-person perception). Enhanced first-person perception, in turn, led to stronger intentions to share the fact-checking messages on social media. Theoretical and practical implications for fact-checking efforts are discussed.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

¹ The mean value of perceived message desirability variable is 4.32 (SD = .99) on a 5-point Likert scale, with only 6.8% of respondents perceived the fact-checking messages very or somewhat undesirable. Although our test of residual normality via a Q-Q plot found that the residuals are normally distributed, meeting the normality assumptions of GLM, the results for H2 and H3 should be interpreted with caution given the skewness of perceived message desirability.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks.

Notes on contributors

Myojung Chung

Myojung Chung (PhD, Syracuse University) is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism at Northeastern University. She is interested in how people process misinformation and how to counter the spread of misinformation.