Examining Source Effects on Perceptions of Fake News in Rural India

Abstract

This paper presents a between-subjects design experiment with 478 people in India to investigate how rural and urban social media users perceive credible and fake posts, and how different types of sources impact their perceptions of information credibility and sharing behaviors. Our findings reveal that: (1) rural social media users were less adept in differentiating between credible and fake posts than their urban counterparts, and (2) source effects on trust and sharing intent manifested differently for urban and rural users. For example, fake posts from family members garnered greater trust among urban users but were trusted the least by rural users. In case of sharing Facebook posts, urban users were more willing to share fake posts from family, whereas, rural users were more inclined to share fake posts from journalists. Drawing on these findings, we propose design interventions to counteract fake news in low-resource environments of the Global South.