Explaining News Trust in Social Media News during the COVID-19 Pandemic—The Role of a Need for Cognition and News Engagement

Ines Kožuh and Peter Čakš
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Ines Kožuh: Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Maribor, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia
Peter Čakš: Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Maribor, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 24, 1-12

Abstract: During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, people have, in many cases, acquired information primarily from social media. Users’ need to stay informed and the intensive circulation of news has led to the spread of misinformation. As they have engaged in news, it has raised the question of trust. This study provides a model on how news trust can be explained through a need for cognition and news engagement. Accordingly, 433 Slovenian social media users participated in our survey. Structural equation modeling revealed that (1) the lower the need for cognition and the more prior knowledge about COVID-19 users have, the more they believe that social media news comprises all facts about the disease; (2) the more users believe that news comprises all essential facts, the more they trust that the news depicts the actual situation about COVID-19 accurately; (3) the more users are interested in engaging with social media news, the more they trust that the actual situation about COVID-19 is depicted accurately. These findings may help authorities to frame messages about COVID-19 effectively. We suggest investing more effort in disseminating new scientific evidence about the disease to contribute to the accurate shaping of knowledge about COVID-19 among social media users.

Keywords: need for cognition; news engagement; news trust; COVID-19; social media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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