The Extrinsic Effects of Unauthenticated Publications on Social Media on Readers’ Judgement and Perception
Keywords:
fake news sharing, social media platforms, deception, COVID-19, misinformation
Abstract
The dissemination of unauthenticated publications on social media platforms has increased over the years and the factors, congruent to the extrinsic effects of these publications, are less studied and analyzed. It is important to understand the relationship between social media content deception and the sharing behavior of all the readers who engage with it on a daily basis. This research studies the perception of 16 Malaysian individuals on the antecedents of falling prey and sharing fake news as well as their perceptions on the general repercussions that are deemed prominent. Emphasizing on the prevalence of mass sharing, these publications continue to significantly impact readers with time, as exemplified in the findings of the research. Study findings also indicate that crucial periods, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, inculcate curiosity and vulnerability and thus making it easier for readers to fall prey to social media postings that serve as a facade for all misinformation and disinformation.
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References
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Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. https://doi.org/10.3386/w23089
Barrett-Maitland, N., & Lynch, J. (2020). Social media, ethics and the privacy paradox. Security and Privacy From a Legal, Ethical, and Technical Perspective. https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90906
Beyens, I., Frison, E., & Eggermont, S. (2016). “I don’t want to miss a thing”: Adolescents’fear of missing out and its relationship to adolescents’ social needs, Facebook use, and Facebook related stress. Computers in Human Behavior, 64, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.05.083
Buchanan, T. (2020). Why do people spread false information online? The effects of message and viewer characteristics on self-reported likelihood of sharing social media disinformation. PLOS ONE, 15(10), e0239666. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239666
Celliers, M., & Hattingh, M. (2020). A systematic review on fake news themes reported in literature. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 223-234. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45002-1_19
Cheng, Y., & Chen, Z. F. (2020). The influence of presumed fake news influence: Examining public support for corporate corrective response, media literacy interventions, and governmental regulation. Mass Communication and Society, 23(5), 705-729. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2020.1750656
Coleman, A. (2020, August 12). 'Hundreds dead' because of COVID-19 misinformation. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-53755067
Collins, B., Hoang, D. T., Nguyen, N. T., & Hwang, D. (2020). Trends in combating fake news on social media – a survey. Journal of Information and Telecommunication, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/24751839.2020.1847379
Cramer, E. M., Song, H., & Drent, A. M. (2016). Social comparison on Facebook: Motivation, affective consequences, self-esteem, and Facebook fatigue. Computers in Human Behavior, 64, 739-746. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.07.049
Daud, M., & Zulhuda, S. (2020). Regulating the Spread of False Content Online in Malaysia: Issues, Challenges and the Way Forward. International Journal of Business and Society, 21, 32-48.
Effron, D. A., & Raj, M. (2019). Misinformation and morality: Encountering fake-newsheadlines makes them seem less unethical to publish and share. Psychological Science, 31(1), 75-87. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619887896
Li, R., & Suh, A. (2015). Factors influencing information credibility on social media platforms: Evidence from Facebook pages. Procedia Computer Science, 72, 314- 328. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2015.12.146
Luqman, A., Cao, X., Ali, A., Masood, A., & Yu, L. (2017). Empirical investigation ofFacebook discontinues usage intentions based on SOR paradigm. Computers in Human Behavior, 70, 544-555. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.01.020
Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commision. (2020). Internet Users Survey 2020. https://www.mcmc.gov.my/skmmgovmy/media/General/pdf/IUS-2020-Report.pdf
Malik, A., Dhir, A., Kaur, P., & Johri, A. (2020). Correlates of social media fatigue and academic performance decrement. Information Technology & People, 34(2), 557-580. https://doi.org/10.1108/itp-06-2019-0289
Molina, M. D., Sundar, S. S., Le, T., & Lee, D. (2019). Fake news” is not simply false information: A concept explication and taxonomy of online content. American Behavioral Scientist, 65(2), 180-212. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764219878224
Montesi, M. (2020). Understanding fake news during the COVID-19 health crisis from the perspective of information behaviour: The case of Spain. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 096100062094965. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961000620949653
Newhoff, D. (2018). Why do we share fake news? The Illusion of More. https://illusionofmore.com/why-do-we-share-fake-news/
Potthast, M., Kiesel, J., Reinartz, K., Bevendorff, J., & Stein, B. (2018). A Stylometric inquiry into Hyperpartisan and fake news. Proceedings of the 56th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers). https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/p18-1022
Soltaninejad, K. (2020). Methanol mass poisoning outbreak, a consequence of COVID-19 pandemic and misleading messages on social media. The International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 11(3), 148-150. https://doi.org/10.34172/ijoem.2020.1983
Stewart, E. (2021). Detecting fake news: Two problems for content moderation. Philosophy & Technology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-021-00442-x
Talwar, S., Dhir, A., Kaur, P., Zafar, N., & Alrasheedy, M. (2019). Why do people share fake news? Associations between the dark side of social media use and fake news sharing behavior. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 51, 72-82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2019.05.026
Talwar, S., Dhir, A., Singh, D., Virk, G. S., & Salo, J. (2020). Sharing of fake news on social media: Application of the honeycomb framework and the third-person effect hypothesis. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 57, 102197. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2020.102197
Tandon, A., Dhir, A., Talwar, S., Kaur, P., & Mäntymäki, M. (2021). Dark consequences of social media-induced fear of missing out (FoMO): Social media stalking, comparisons, and fatigue. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 171, 120931. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120931
Thaler, M. (2020). The "Fake news'' effect: Experimentally identifying motivated reasoning using trust in news. AEA Randomized Controlled Trials. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.4339-1.0
Tsfati, Y., Boomgaarden, H. G., Strömbäck, J., Vliegenthart, R., Damstra, A., & Lindgren, E. (2020). Causes and consequences of mainstream media dissemination of fake news: Literature review and synthesis. Annals of the International Communication Association, 44(2), 157-173. https://doi.org/10.1080/23808985.2020.1759443
Vereshchaka, A., Cosimini, S., & Dong, W. (2020). Analyzing and distinguishing fake and real news to mitigate the problem of disinformation. Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 26(3), 350-364. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10588-020-09307-8
