Inserting salient details into social media news, even if they are unrelated to the main issues, can be used manipulatively to drive engagement and sharing of such posts on social networks.
By Grant Hilary Brenner
Misinformation is like a disease. Understanding how it spreads is key to stopping it. Given the information environment we find ourselves in, having control over what is true and what is false is not just a matter of integrity and morality but of survival.
This is because misinformation kills people. Poor-quality information undermines quality decision-making, leading to the spread of preventable diseases, damaging public health programs, and delaying or hindering recognition and response to growing threats, including climate change, Covid-19, migration, etc.
People tend to “believe lies despite the apparent truth” if something seems like it might be true, and is consistent with their values and desires. Moreover, they are likely to share it relentlessly on social media. However, there has been less clarity about what individual factors come into play when people decide whether to engage with or share potentially misleading posts on social media.
To understand the drivers of misinformation, Morosoli and colleagues conducted a study recently published in the journal American Behavioral Scientist. They looked at sociodemographic factors including gender, age, and education level; enabling factors, such as social media behavior, including political beliefs, the consistency of one’s stances on a given topic, and the importance of the issue at hand; along with relevant personality traits, particularly the dark triad: narcissism, sociopathy, and Machiavellianism.
The researchers surveyed over 7,000 people in six different countries, all Western democracies (Switzerland, Belgium, France, Germany, Britain and the United States). They focused on information about climate change, immigration and Covid-6, all polarizing social issues that are known to be riddled with misinformation.
Participants in the study were shown three examples of social media posts, one for each issue, specifically designed to contain false information, mirroring current posts. They were asked for their opinions on helping an online news portal verify the posts before publication.
They were asked how likely they would be to click on a particular post, and how motivated they would be to share it. Various demographic factors of political attitudes and beliefs were surveyed using accepted rating scales.
The researchers found that men, older adults, and people with lower academic achievement were significantly more likely to engage in the examples given. The dark triad personality traits of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism were associated with greater engagement with social media posts.
Furthermore, people whose political orientation was conservative (versus liberal) were more likely to engage with the posts they were shown. Subjects said they were more likely to share the posts shown when they were consistent with their own attitudes and beliefs.
For example, fake news that says climate change isn't real, when they didn't believe it to begin with. The more important an issue was perceived to be, the more likely participants were to indicate that they would be motivated to share a particular post.
Participants were most likely to engage with the post about climate change protests, followed by immigration, and finally coronavirus. Those who had greater trust in social media news reported greater motivation to share posts.
People who tended to engage with posts from their friends and family were also more likely to share posts, suggesting a synergistic social effect. But there were also some nuanced findings that warranted further investigation.
For example, while right-leaning people were generally more likely to agree with misinformation, the effect was also stronger for posts about immigration.
Likewise, attitude mattered more for immigration: Spreading misinformation was more likely to occur when the information in the post matched someone's perspective.
Particularly in relation to the climate change post, news stories blaming protesters for littering drove greater engagement due to the attribution of blame, rather than the issue of climate change itself, underscoring the importance of detail in understanding the spread of misinformation through social media.
This suggests that the insertion of salient details into social media news, even if unrelated to the main issues, can be used manipulatively to drive engagement and sharing of such posts on social networks. / “Psychology Today” – Bota.al
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