Self-reported willingness to share political news articles in online surveys correlates with actual sharing on Twitter

Journal article

False political information spreads far and fast across social media, with negative consequences for society. Individual users play a key role in sharing such material, extending its range through the phenomenon of organic reach. An online experiment tested the hypotheses that higher trust in the source of false information, and lower agreeableness of the person encountering it, would predict their likelihood of extending its reach. One hundred and seventy-two participants saw real examples of disinformation stories that had been posted to social media and rated their likelihood of sharing and interacting with it in other ways. Neither trust in the source nor agreeableness influenced organic reach. However, people lower in conscientiousness rated themselves as more likely to extend its reach, as did people who believed the stories more likely to be true

Authors: Mosleh, M; Pennycook, G; Rand, DG

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• Journal: PLoS ONE
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 2
• Pages: e0228882-e0228882
• Publication date: 2020-02-10
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0228882
• EISSN: 1932-6203
• ISSN: 1932-6203
• Language: English
• Keywords: Psychology; Business; World Wide Web; Social psychology; Social media; Advertising; Order (exchange); Internet privacy; Headline; Computer science