Why Do People Share Political Information and Misinformation Online? Developing a Bottom-Up Descriptive Framework

Abstract

Social media users are key actors in the spreading of misleading or incorrect information. To develop an integrative parsimonious summary of social media users’ own accounts of motives for sharing political information, we conducted: (1) a literature review of motives for personally sharing false information as reported by social media users and (2) qualitative research concerning these motives using an innovative, ecologically valid method. Based on our findings, we developed a pool of items evaluating social media users’ motives for sharing false political information, which we then tested and analyzed the dimensionality of in (3) a pre-registered questionnaire-based study to identify key clusters of users’ own accounts of motives for sharing both true and false political information. The current findings show that there are distinct sets of motives people report for their misinformation sharing behavior: prosocial activism, attack or manipulation of others, entertainment, awareness, political self-expression, and fighting false information. Also, these sets of motives are associated with variables known to predict sharing misinformation, and some of these sets predict social media users’ self-reports of having shared misinformation in the past. Our findings highlight and elaborate on users’ motives that reflect a concern with “making things better” and acting in a manner that is beneficial to society as a whole, and suggest that different interventions may be required to combat misinformation sharing driven by different motives. A potential set of 18 items that could be used in questionnaires measuring motivations for sharing political news online is described.

Individual differences in sharing false political information on social media: deliberate and accidental sharing, motivations and positive schizotypy

“…Some recent work has drawn on past research and new data to develop a framework for describing sharing motivation that is based on users' own accounts of why they have shared material [30]. Given that people will often have shared material in good faith -thinking it is true -it is important that this applies to sharing political information in general as well as false information specifically.…”

“…We also included another measure of misinformation amplification (sharing false information without seeking to correct it) over the past month [15]. Participants who had shared false information on purpose were asked to briefly say why; these data were used elsewhere [30].…”

“…Study 2 was a preregistered ( https://osf.io/5jqz9 ) cross-sectional online survey study examining the extent to which a range of variables predicted selfreports of sharing false information either accidentally or deliberately. It built on Study 1 by additionally considering the role of motivation, drawing on the six clusters of motivations for sharing political information (both true and false) identified by [30]: Antisocial, disruptive motivations for sharing are potentially served by sharing knowingly false, exaggerated stories [35]. Accordingly, we hypothesize that people who share political information online to attack or manipulate others will be more likely to have deliberately shared false information online (Hypothesis 1).…”

“…This might be the case for false material they believe is true, and potentially also information they believe to be false (because they argue that 'there is no harm in hearing people's opinions'). The framework advanced by [30] labelled this cluster of motives 'awareness'. Based on this argument that the pursuit of freedom of information online can involve sharing of information regardless of its perceived accuracy, we hypothesize that people motivated by awareness will be more likely to report having shared false information online both deliberately (Hypothesis 3) and accidentally (Hypothesis 4).…”

“…Participants completed the same background measures and social media measures as in Study 1. Motives for sharing political information on social media were assessed using an 18-item questionnaire that provides a parsimonious set of short scales addressing six key clusters of users' own accounts of motives for sharing both true and false political information [30]. This questionnaire was comprised of six 3-item subscales, evaluating prosocial activism (e.g., "to inform people"), attack or manipulation of others (e.g., "to manipulate what people think"), entertainment (e.g., "to be funny"), awareness (e.g., "to balance the bias in the media"), political self-expression (e.g., "to express my political beliefs"), and fighting false information (e.g., "to point out this material is false or misleading").…”