From Dark to Light: The Many Shades of Sharing Misinformation Online

Miriam J. Metzger, Andrew J. Flanagin, Paul Mena, Shan Jiang and Christo Wilson
Additional contact information
Miriam J. Metzger: Department of Communication, University of California, USA
Andrew J. Flanagin: Department of Communication, University of California, USA
Paul Mena: Writing Program, University of California, USA
Shan Jiang: Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University, USA
Christo Wilson: Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University, USA

Media and Communication, 2021, vol. 9, issue 1, 134-143

Abstract: Research typically presumes that people believe misinformation and propagate it through their social networks. Yet, a wide range of motivations for sharing misinformation might impact its spread, as well as people’s belief of it. By examining research on motivations for sharing news information generally, and misinformation specifically, we derive a range of motivations that broaden current understandings of the sharing of misinformation to include factors that may to some extent mitigate the presumed dangers of misinformation for society. To illustrate the utility of our viewpoint we report data from a preliminary study of people’s dis/belief reactions to misinformation shared on social media using natural language processing. Analyses of over 2,5 million comments demonstrate that misinformation on social media is often disbelieved. These insights are leveraged to propose directions for future research that incorporate a more inclusive understanding of the various motivations and strategies for sharing misinformation socially in large-scale online networks.

Keywords: credibility; fake news; misinformation; news sharing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3409 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:134-143

DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3409

Access Statistics for this article

Media and Communication is currently edited by Raquel Silva

More articles in Media and Communication from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().