The Moderation of Human Characteristics in the Control Mechanisms of Rumours in Social Media: The Case of Food Rumours in China.

Sangluo Sun,Xiaowei Wen,Ying Zhu,Jiali Liu,Xiaowei Ge,Fernando Barrio

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.782313

Abstract

Social networks are widely used as a fast and ubiquitous information-sharing medium. The mass spread of food rumours has seriously invaded public’s healthy life and impacted food production. It can be argued that the government, companies, and the media have the responsibility to send true anti-rumour messages to reduce panic, and the risks involved in different forms of communication to the public have not been properly assessed. The manuscript develops an empirical analysis model from 683 food anti-rumour cases and 7,967 data of the users with top comments to test the influence of the strength of rumour/anti-rumour on rumour control. Furthermore, dividing the users into three categories, Leaders, Chatters, and General Public, and study the influence of human characteristics on the relationship between the strength of rumour/anti-rumour and rumour control by considering the different human characteristics as moderator variables. The results showed that anti-rumours have a significant positive impact on the control of rumours; the ambiguity of rumours has a significant negative impact on the Positive Comment Index (PCI) in rumour control. Further, the Leaders increased the overall level of PCI, but negatively adjusted the relationship between evidence and PCI; the Chatters and the General Public reduced the overall level of PCI, and Chatters weakened the relationship between the specific type of anti-rumour form and PCI while the General Public enhanced the relationship between the specific type of anti-rumour form and PCI. In the long run, the role of Leaders needs to be further improved, and the importance of the General Public is growing in the food rumour control process.

Highlights

In December 2019, a new strain of a Coronavirus, identified as the SARS-CoV-2, had been transmitted to humans and the Coronavirus disease COVID-19 started to become a potential global pandemic with over 14 million confirmed cases so far
Leaders can control the spread of rumours with their influence, but in a normal social situation, the General Public can control rumours under certain conditions (Askarizadeh et al, 2019), all of which lead us to propose the last group of hypotheses: Hypothesis 6a: The Leader positively moderates the relationship between evidentiality and Positive Comment Index (PCI)
The results are as follow: First, among the strength of anti-rumour, evidentiality has a significant positive influence on rumour control, which has the greatest impact on the positive comment index, followed by the number of Reposting, and again the number of Likes

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In December 2019, a new strain of a Coronavirus, identified as the SARS-CoV-2, had been transmitted to humans and the Coronavirus disease COVID-19 started to become a potential global pandemic with over 14 million confirmed cases so far. Compared to those bringing positive news about food safety issues, institutions or individuals who are prepared to produce negative news (e.g., the relationship between hormone residues and cancer or the impact of antibiotics in livestock production on human antibiotic resistance) are more likely to spread in the public through mass media, with a far greater and faster impact on consumer behaviour (Verbeke and Ward, 2001; Verbeke et al, 2007) This means that controlling the rumours on social media and promoting the dissemination of anti-rumours is relied on algorithms and based on the consideration of user psychology. Leaders can control the spread of rumours with their influence, but in a normal social situation, the General Public can control rumours under certain conditions (Askarizadeh et al, 2019), all of which lead us to propose the last group of hypotheses: Hypothesis 6a: The Leader positively moderates the relationship between evidentiality and PCI. As the number of Leaders in the population increases, the positive impact of the evidentiality on the positive comment index is diminished; with the entry of Chatters, the positive impact of single form on the PCI is significantly weakened; with the increase of the General Public, the positive impact of the single form on the PCI is significantly enhanced

DISCUSSION

Findings

CONCLUSION

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT