Predictors of likelihood of sharing disinformation on social media 2019-2020

Abstract

Individuals who encounter false information on social media may actively spread it further, by sharing or otherwise engaging with it. Much of the spread of disinformation can thus be attributed to human action. This project explored the effect of message attributes (authoritativeness of source, consensus indicators, consistency with recipient beliefs) and viewer characteristics (digital literacy, personality, and demographic variables) on the self-rated likelihood of spreading disinformation. Four experimental studies were performed (total N=2,634), with characteristics of the messages being manipulated and characteristics of the individuals being measured. The psychometric measures used were the New Media Literacy Scale (Koc & Barut, 2016), the Social and Economic Conservatism Scale (Everett, 2013), and a Five-Factor personality questionnaire (Buchanan, Johnson, & Goldberg, 2005) derived from the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP; Goldberg, 1999) that provides indices of Extraversion, Neuroticism, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. Participants indicated their likelihood of sharing three exemplars of social media disinformation. Participants also provided information as to whether they had inadvertently or deliberately spread political disinformation in the past.