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The spread of fake news represents a serious threat to consumers, companies and society. Previous studies have linked emotional arousal to an increased propensity to spread information and a decrease in people’s ability to recognize fake news. However, the effect of an individual’s emotional state on fake news sharing remains unclear, particularly during periods of severe disruptions such as pandemics. This study aims to fill the gap in the literature by elucidating how heightened emotions affect fake news sharing behavior.

To validate the conceptual model, this study uses a quantitative approach. Data were collected from 212 online questionnaires and then analyzed using the structural equation modeling technique.

Results of this study show that positive emotions have indirect effects on fake news sharing behavior by allowing users to view the quality of information circulating on social media in a more positive light, and increasing their socialization behavior leading them to share fake news. Negative emotions indirectly impact fake news sharing by affecting users’ information overload and reinforcing prior beliefs, which in turn increases fake news sharing.

This study identifies several novel associations between emotions and fake news sharing behavior and offers a theoretical lens that can be used in future studies. It also provides several practical implications on the prevention mechanism that can counteract the dissemination of fake news.

This study investigates the impact of individuals’ emotional states on fake news sharing behavior, and establishes four user-centric antecedents to this sharing behavior. By focusing on individuals’ emotional state, cognitive reaction and behavioral response, it is among the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to offer a multidimensional understanding of individuals’ interaction with news that circulates on social media.

Technology has eased access to information. During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, ease of access and transmission of information via social media has led to ambiguity, misinformation and uncertainty. This research studies the aforementioned behaviours of information sharing and verification related to COVID-19, in the context of social media.

Two studies have been carried out. Study 1, with Indian social media users, is a two-factor between-subjects experimental design that investigated the effect of message polarity (positive versus negative) and message type (news versus rumour) on the dissemination and verification behaviour of COVID-19-related messages. The study also investigated the mediation of perceived message importance and health anxiety. Study 2 is a replica study conducted with US users.

The study finding revealed significantly higher message sharing for news than rumour. Further, for the Indian users, message with positive polarity led to higher message sharing and message with negative polarity led to higher verification behaviour. On the contrary, for the US users, message with negative polarity led to higher message sharing and message with positive polarity led to higher verification behaviour. Finally, the study revealed message importance mediates the relationship of message type and message sharing behaviour for Indian and US users; however, health anxiety mediation was significant only for Indian users.

The findings offer important implications related to information regulation during a health crisis. Unverified information sharing is harmful during a pandemic. The study sheds light on this behaviour such that stakeholders get insights and better manage the information being disseminated.

The study investigates the behaviour of sharing and verification of social media messages between users containing health information (news and rumour) related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-07-2020-0282

Coronavirus disease 2019-related fake news consistently appears on social media. This study uses appraisal theory to analyze the impact of such rumors on individuals' emotions, motivations, and intentions to share fake news. Furthermore, the concept of psychological distance and construal level theory are used in combination with appraisal theory to compare toilet paper shortages and celebrity scandal rumors.

Data collected from 299 Taiwanese respondents to 150 toilet paper shortage-related and 149 celebrity gossip-related questionnaires were processed using partial least squares regression and multigroup analysis.

In both cases, surprise is felt most intensely. However, unlike in the celebrity fake news scenario, worry plays a prominent role in driving the altruistic sharing motivation related to the toilet paper shortage rumor. Furthermore, while emotional attributes (basic or self-conscious, concrete, or abstract) serve as a guide for how emotions change with psychological distance, the degree to which an emotion is relevant to the fake news context is key to its manifestation.

This study examines the impact of individuals' emotions on their motivations and intention to share fake news, applying the appraisal theory and the psychological distance concept in a single study to fake news sharing intention. It evaluates the relationship between psychological distance and emotions, revealing that it is not absolute and need not necessarily shift according to psychological distance change; rather, the relationship is context-sensitive.

The purpose of this paper is to draw from the diffusion of innovations theory to explore multi-levels of influences (i.e. individuals, networks, news attributes) on news sharing in social media.

A survey was designed and administered to 309 respondents. Structural equation modelling analysis was conducted to examine the three levels of influential factors. These included self-perceptions of opinion leadership and seeking at the individual level, perceived tie strength and homophily at the network level, and finally, perceived news credibility and news preference at the news attribute level.

The results revealed that the influences of self-perceptions of opinion leadership, perceived tie strength in online networks and perceived preference of online news had significant effects on users’ news sharing intention in social media. However, self-perceptions of opinion seeking, homophily, and perceived news credibility were not significant.

This is one of the first studies on news sharing in social media that focus on diverse levels of influential factors. In particular, the research suggests the viability of the diffusion of innovations theory to explain this pervasive global phenomenon. Further, the influential factors identified may help to stimulate active participation in social media platforms and ultimately enhance the sustainability of these platforms.

This study developed a predictive model that established the user motivational factors that predict COVID-19 fake news sharing on social media.

The partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used for the analysis. Data were drawn from 152 Facebook and WhatsApp users in Nigeria to examine the research model formulated using the uses and gratification theory (UGT).

We found that altruism, instant news sharing, socialisation and self-promotion predicted fake news sharing related to COVID-19 pandemic among social media users in Nigeria. Specifically, altruism was the strongest predictor to fake news sharing behaviour related to COVID-19, followed by instant news sharing and socialisation. On the contrary, entertainment had no association with fake news sharing on COVID-19.

We suggest intervention strategies which nudge people to be sceptical of the information they come across on social media. We also recommend healthcare providers and the Nigerian government to provide relevant information on this current pandemic. That is, correct information should be shared widely to the public domain through various conventional and online media. This will lessen the spread of fake news on the concocted cure and prevention tips found online.

The salient contributions of this study are as follows: First, it brings to the fore that the desire for self-promotion is associated with fake news sharing on social media; second, it shifts the focus of studies on fake news from detection methods to sharing behaviour, which fuels the uncontrollable spread of falsehood; third, it expands the existing literature on misinformation sharing by demonstrating the user motivation that leads to fake news sharing using the UGT.

“Fake news” or misinformation sharing using social media sites into public discourse or politics has increased dramatically, over the last few years, especially in the current COVID-19 pandemic causing concern. However, this phenomenon is inadequately researched. This study examines fake news sharing with the lens of stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory, uses and gratification theory (UGT) and big five personality traits (BFPT) theory to understand the motivations for sharing fake news and the personality traits that do so. The stimuli in the model comprise gratifications (pass time, entertainment, socialization, information sharing and information seeking) and personality traits (agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, openness and neuroticism). The feeling of authenticating or instantly sharing news is the organism leading to sharing fake news, which forms the response in the study.

The conceptual model was tested by the data collected from a sample of 221 social media users in India. The data were analyzed with partial least squares structural equation modeling to determine the effects of UGT and personality traits on fake news sharing. The moderating role of the platform WhatsApp or Facebook was studied.

The results suggest that pass time, information sharing and socialization gratifications lead to instant sharing news on social media platforms. Individuals who exhibit extraversion, neuroticism and openness share news on social media platforms instantly. In contrast, agreeableness and conscientiousness personality traits lead to authentication news before sharing on the social media platform.

This study contributes to social media literature by identifying the user gratifications and personality traits that lead to sharing fake news on social media platforms. Furthermore, the study also sheds light on the moderating influence of the choice of the social media platform for fake news sharing.

The purpose of the study is threefold: first, to identify what factors influence mobile users' willingness of news learning and sharing, second, to find out whether users' learning in the news platforms will affect their sharing behavior and third, to access the impact of sharing intention on actual sharing behavior on the mobile platform.

This study proposes an influence mechanism model for examining the relationship among the factors, news learning and news sharing. The proposed mechanism includes factors at three levels: personal, interpersonal and social level. To achieve this, researchers collected data from 474 mobile news users in China to test the hypotheses. The tools SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 23.0 were used to analysis the reliability, validity, model fits and structural equation modeling (SEM), respectively.

The findings indicate that news learning on the mobile platforms is affected by self-efficacy and self-enhancement. And news sharing intention is influenced by self-efficacy, interpersonal trust, interpersonal reciprocity, online community identity and social norms positively. News sharing intention has a significant effect on news sharing behavior, but news learning has an insignificant relationship with new sharing.

This study provides practical guidelines for mobile platform operators and news media managers by explicating the various factors of users' engagement on the news platforms. This paper also enriches the literature of news learning and news sharing on mobile by the integration of two theories: the social ecology theory and the interpersonal behavior theory.

The insidious proliferation of online misinformation represents a significant societal problem. With a wealth of research dedicated to the topic, it is still unclear what determines fake news sharing. This paper comparatively examines fake and accurate news sharing in a novel experimental setting that manipulates news about terrorism.

The authors follow an extended version of the uses-and-gratification framework for news sharing, complemented by variables commonly employed in fake news rebuttal studies.

Logistic regression and classification trees revealed worry about the topic, media literacy, information-seeking and conservatism as significant predictors of willingness to share news online. No significant association was found for general analytical thinking, journalism skepticism, conspiracy ideation, uses-and-gratification motives or pass-time coping strategies.

The current results broaden and expand the literature examining beliefs in and sharing of misinformation, highlighting the role of media literacy in protecting the public against the spread of fake news.

This is, to the authors’ knowledge, the first study to integrate a breadth of theoretically and empirically driven predictors of fake news sharing within a single experimental framework.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-12-2022-0693

Social media have become an increasingly important source for people to learn about politics and public affairs. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of social media news sharing as a reasoning process of the O-S-R-O-R model and the moderation role of social media news performance on the association between news consumption and attitudinal changes.

A national survey was conducted in the US. The researcher recruited participants in the Qualtrics national panel by following the census adult demographic breakdown.

This study finds that social media news consumption on the US-China trade conflict is likely to lead Americans to change attitudes toward Chinese, and this relationship is mediated by social media news sharing. In addition, the indirect relationship via news sharing is found particularly strong among individuals who perceive social media news fair and balanced.

This study extends the literature by examining social media news engagement on the ongoing trade conflict between the US and China. It reveals that the impact of social media news consumption on people's attitudinal and behavioral changes depends on people's perceived news quality on these platforms. Theoretical contribution to the O-S-R-O-R model and practical implications to social media news are discussed in terms of the role that social media platforms play in attitude change.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-05-2020-0178

The spread of fake news on social networking sites (SNS) poses a threat to the marketing landscape, yet little is known about how fake news affect consumers’ perceptions, attitudes and behaviors. This study aims to explore when consumers believe fake news, whom they blame for it (e.g. negative attitudes toward brands or SNS) and when they choose to share it.

Data obtained from 80 open-ended, semistructured interviews, conducted with SNS consumers and experts, is analyzed following the principles of grounded theory and the Gioia methodology.

Factors affecting consumers’ perceptions of fake news include skepticism, awareness, previous experience, appeal and message cues. Consumers’ brand- and SNS-related attitudes are affected by consumers’ blame, which is determined by consumers’ perceptions of the vetting efforts, role and ethical obligation of SNS. Consumers’ motives for sharing fake news include duty, retaliation, authentication and status-seeking. Theoretical and practical implications derived from the study’s novel conceptual framework are discussed.

This study identifies communication strategies that marketing professionals can use to mitigate and counter the negative effects of fake news.

By simultaneously considering consumers’ perceptions of the source, information and medium (i.e. SNS), this study presents a novel conceptual framework providing a marketing-centered, dynamic view on consumers’ fake news experience and connecting consumers’ perceptions, attitudes and behaviors in the context of fake news.