Citation

Robertson DJ, Shephard MP, Anderson A, Huhe N, Rapp DN, Madsen JK. Front. Psychol. 2023; 14: e1236748.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Frontiers Research Foundation)

DOI

10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1236748

PMID

37546452

PMCID

PMC10400351

Abstract

The proliferation of fake news on social media has become a major societal concern which has been shown to impact elections, referenda, and effective public health messaging (Lewandowsky et al., 2017). To combat this, there is now a growing body of research that focuses on the role of psychological and behavioral science in understanding and mitigating the spread of misinformation (Rapp and Salovich, 2018; Van Bavel et al., 2020). For example, research on belief revision has reported a "continued influence effect" (CIE) where misinformation lingers in the mind of a person despite being categorically refuted (e.g., Ecker et al., 2010; Desai et al., 2020), simulations have attempted to replicate the seepage of misinformation in social networks (Lewandowsky et al., 2019), and inoculation theorists are building training tools to understand and enhance psychological resistance against misinformation. Such attempts have been conducted in the context of COVID-19 (Basol et al., 2021), political disinformation (Roozenbeek and van der Linden, 2020), and climate change (Maertens et al., 2020). While it is clear that important advances have been made in our understanding of the critical psychological functions that underpin how individuals seek out, process, and share misinformation--there is still much to do. Therefore, in this special topic, we are delighted to introduce six new papers which present novel, interesting, and engaging contributions to our understanding of the fake news phenomenon.

While investigating the factors that support an individual's ability to detect fake news has taken a prominent position in existing research, there has been less focus on sharing behavior. Understanding the reasons that drive social media users to share fake news will be key to developing effective interventions. In this special issue, papers by t'Serstevens et al., Shephard et al., and Ahmed et al. provide new data on some of the components that may drive the sharing of fake news.

FINDINGS from t'Serstevens et al. using a mock Twitter design, show that fake news is more likely to be reacted to and shared, and that self-assessed news veracity and an "activist-type" type behavior play a key role in driving the sharing of misinformation. Both Shephard et al. and Ahmed et al. compliment this research by showing that individual differences in emotional stability, fear of missing out (FOMO), self-regulation, belief in accuracy, and cognitive ability also play important roles in understanding why people share fake news and disinformation (using non-partisan content and deepfake video stimuli respectively)...

Language: en

Keywords

social media; disinformation and bias; fake news; misinformation; news sharing