Sharing of fake news on social media: Application of the honeycomb framework and the third-person effect hypothesis

Shalini Talwar, Amandeep Dhir, Dilraj Singh, Gurnam Singh Virk and Jari Salo

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2020, vol. 57, issue C

Abstract: Sharing of fake news on social media platforms is a global concern, with research offering little insight into the motives behind such sharing. This study adopts a mixed-method approach to explore fake-news sharing behaviour. To begin with, qualitative data from 58 open-ended essays was analysed to identify six behavioural manifestations associated with sharing fake news. Thereafter, research model hypothesizing the association between these behaviours was proposed using the honeycomb framework and the third-person effect hypothesis. Age and gender were the control variables. Two data sets obtained from cross-sectional surveys with 471 and 374 social media users were utilized to test the proposed model. The study results suggest that instantaneous sharing of news for creating awareness had positive effect on sharing fake news due to lack of time and religiosity. However, authenticating news before sharing had no effect on sharing fake news due to lack of time and religiosity. The study results also suggest that social media users who engage in active corrective action are unlikely to share fake news due to lack of time. These results have significant theoretical and practical implications.

Keywords: fake News; Fake-news sharing behaviour; Honeycomb framework; Mixed-method research; Social media; Third-person effect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969698920306433
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:joreco:v:57:y:2020:i:c:s0969698920306433

DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2020.102197

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services is currently edited by Harry Timmermans

More articles in Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().