Rage of righteousness: Anger's role in promoting debunking effects during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The concerning proliferation of misinformation and its adverse consequences have spurred considerable effort among scholars and practitioners to debunk misinformation. Nevertheless, few studies have investigated how emotions influence the effectiveness of debunking. In our study, following the cognitive functional model, we analyzed 441 short videos on Douyin and their 8315 comments to examine how videos that debunk misinformation with punishment-focused frames improve the effectiveness of debunking. Our results demonstrate that the audience's anger, which we characterize as righteous anger, can be induced by video content that primes a preference for the punishment of creators and spreaders of misinformation. Moreover, when anger facilitates the audience's trust in debunking, message involvement and argument quality can intensify their anger.