The dangers of blind trust: Examining the interplay among social media news use,misinformation identification,and news trust on conspiracy beliefs

Abstract

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation has been circulating on social media and multiple conspiracy theories have since become quite popular. We conducted a U.S. national survey for three main purposes. First, we aim to examine the association between social media news consumption and conspiracy beliefs specific to COVID-19 and general conspiracy beliefs. Second, we investigate the influence of an important moderator, social media news trust, that has been overlooked in prior studies. Third, we further propose a moderated moderation model by including misinformation identification. Our findings show that social media news use was associated with higher conspiracy beliefs, and trust in social media news was found to be a significant moderator of the relationship between social media news use and conspiracy beliefs. Moreover, our findings show that misinformation identification moderated the relationship between social media news use and trust. Implications are discussed.

Keywords

conspiracy beliefs COVID-19 misinformation identification social media news trust social media news use

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Ahmed

Vidal-Alaball

Downing

Seguí

(2020) COVID-19 and the 5G conspiracy theory: Social network analysis of twitter data. Journal of Medical Internet Research 22(5): e19458. DOI: 10.2196/19458.

Allington

Duffy

Wessely

Dhavan

Rubin

(2020) Health-protective behaviour, social media usage and conspiracy belief during the COVID-19 public health emergency. Psychological Medicine. Epub ahead of print 9 June. DOI: 10.1017/S003329172000224X.

Anspach

Carlson

(2020) What to believe? Social media commentary and belief in misinformation. Political Behavior 42: 697–718.

Ardèvol-Abreu

Gil de Zúñiga

(2017) Effects of editorial media bias perception and media trust on the use of traditional, citizen, and social media news. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 94(3): 703–724.

Ardèvol-Abreu

Hooker

Gil

Zúñiga

(2018) Online news creation, trust in the media, and political participation: Direct and moderating effects over time. Journalism 19(5): 611–631.

AVAAZ (2020) How Facebook can flatten the curve of the coronavirus infodemic: Study indicates Facebook is rife with bogus cures and conspiracy theories that remain on the platform long enough to put millions of people at risk. Report published by AVAAZ, London. Available at: https://avaazimages.avaaz.org/facebook_coronavirus_misinformation.pdf

Bantimaroudis

Sideri

Ballas

Panagiotidis

Ziogas

(2020) Conspiracism on social media: An agenda melding of group-mediated deceptions. International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics 16(2): 115–138.

Bastani

Bahrami

(2020) COVID-19 related misinformation on social media: A qualitative study from Iran. Journal of Medical Internet Research. Epub ahead of print 5 April. DOI: 10.2196/18932.

Berinsky

Huber

Lenz

(2012) Evaluating online labor markets for experimental research: Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk. Political Analysis 20: 351–368.

10.

Bierwiaczonek

Kunst

Pich

(2020) Belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories reduces social distancing over time. Applied Psychology 12: 1270–1285.

11.

Borah

Edgerly

Vraga

Shah

(2013) Hearing and talking to the other side: Antecedents of cross-cutting exposure in adolescents. Mass Communication and Society 16(3): 391–416.

12.

Bradshaw

Howard

Kollanyi

Neudert

(2020) Sourcing and automation of political news and information over social media in the United States, 2016-2018. Political Communication 37(2): 173–193.

13.

Brito

(2020) President Trump uses term “Chinese virus” to describe coronavirus, prompting a backlash. CBS News. Available at: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-trump-coronavirus-chinese-virus-backlash/

14.

Byford

(2011) Conspiracy Theories: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

15.

Cassino

(2016) Fairleigh Dickinson University’s public mind poll finds trump supporters more conspiracy-minded than other republicans. Available at: http://view2.fdu.edu/publicmind/2016/160504/

16.

Castillo

Mendoza

Poblete

(2011). Information credibility on twitter. In: Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on World Wide Web, Hyderabad, India, 28 March–1 April, pp. 675–684. New York: ACM.

17.

Chen

Wang

(2011) Unpacking new media literacy. Systemics Cybernetics and Informatics 9(2): 84–88.

18.

Chou

Klein

(2018) Addressing health-related misinformation on social media. JAMA 320: 2417–2418.

19.

Coleman

(2012) Believing the news: From sinking trust to atrophied efficacy. European Journal of Communication 27(1): 35–45.

20.

Craft

Ashley

Maksl

(2017) News media literacy and conspiracy theory endorsement. Communication and the Public 2(4): 388–401.

21.

Douglas

Sutton

Callan

Dawtry

Harvey

(2016) Someone is pulling the strings: Hypersensitive agency detection and belief in conspiracy theories. Thinking & Reasoning 22: 57–77.

22.

Douglas

Sutton

(2008) The hidden impact of conspiracy theories: Perceived and actual influence of theories surrounding the death of Princess Diana. Journal of Social Psychology 148(2): 210–222.

23.

Douglas

Uscinski

Sutton

Cichocka

Nefes

Ang

, et al. (2019) Understanding conspiracy theories. Political Psychology 40: 3–35.

24.

Downey

(2020) New COVID-19 cases “dominated by young people.” Healio. Available at: https://www.healio.com/news/pediatrics/20200626/new-covid19-cases-dominated-by-young-people

25.

Druckman

(2001) On the limits of framing effects: Who can frame? Journal of Politics 63(4): 1041–1066.

26.

Dutton

Shepherd

(2006) Trust in the Internet as an experience technology. Information Communication & Society 9(4): 433–451.

27.

Ecker

Lewandowsky

Tang

DTW

(2010) Explicit warnings reduce but do not eliminate the continued influence of misinformation. Memory and Cognition 38(8): 1087–1100.

28.

Egelhofer

Lecheler

(2019) Fake news as a two-dimensional phenomenon: A framework and research agenda. Annals of the International Communication Association 43(2): 97–116.

29.

Fletcher

Nielsen

(2018) Are people incidentally exposed to news on social media? A comparative analysis. New Media & Society 20: 2450–2468.

30.

Freelon

Wells

(2020) Disinformation as political communication. Political Communication 37(2): 145–156.

31.

Freeman

Waite

Rosebrock

Petit

Causier

East

, et al. (2020) Coronavirus conspiracy beliefs, mistrust, and compliance with government guidelines in England. Psychological Medicine: 1–13.

32.

Garrett

(2019) Social media’s contribution to political misperceptions in U.S. Presidential elections. PLoS ONE 14: e0213500.

33.

Goertzel

(2010) Conspiracy theories in science. European Molecular Biology Organization Reports 11: 493–499.

34.

Guess

Nyhan

Reifler

(2018) Exposure to untrustworthy websites in the 2016 U.S. election. Available at: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/fake-news-2016.pdf

35.

Halpern

Gibbs

(2013) Social media as a catalyst for online deliberation? Exploring the affordances of Facebook and YouTube for political expression. Computers in Human Behavior 29(3): 1159–1168.

36.

Hameleers

Powell

Van der Meer

Bos

(2020) A picture paints a thousand lies? The effects and mechanisms of multimodal disinformation and rebuttals disseminated via social media. Political Communication 37(2): 281–301.

37.

Huber

Barnidge

Zúñiga

Liu

(2019) Fostering public trust in science: The role of social media. Public Understanding of Science 28(7): 759–777.

38.

Huff

Tingley

(2015) “Who are these people?” Evaluating the demographic characteristics and political preferences of MTurk survey respondents. Research & Politics 2(3): 4648.

39.

Jolley

Douglas

(2014b) The social consequences of conspiracism: Exposure to conspiracy theories decreases intentions to engage in politics and to reduce one’s carbon footprint. British Journal of Psychology 105(1): 35–56.

40.

Jolley

Douglas

(2014a) The effects of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories on vaccination intentions. PLoS ONE 9(2): e89177.

41.

Jones-Jang

Mortensen

Liu

(2019) Does media literacy help identification of fake news? Information literacy helps, but other literacies don’t. American Behavioral Scientist 65: 371–388.

42.

Jurkowitz

Mitchell

(2020) Americans who primarily get news through social media are least likely to follow COVID-19 coverage, most likely to report seeing made-up news. Pew Research Center. Available at: https://www.journalism.org/2020/03/25/americans-who-primarily-get-news-through-social-media-are-least-likely-to-follow-covid-19-coverage-most-likely-to-report-seeing-made-up-news/

43.

Kalogeropoulos

Suiter

Udris

Eisenegger

(2019) News media trust and news consumption: factors related to trust in news in 35 countries. International Journal of Communication 13: 3672–3693.

44.

Karlsson

Clerwall

Nord

(2017) Do not stand corrected: Transparency and users’ attitudes to inaccurate news and corrections in online journalism. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 94(1): 148–167.

45.

Kaufhold

Valenzuela

Gil

Zúñiga

(2010) Citizen journalism and democracy: How user-generated news use relates to political knowledge and participation. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 87(3–4): 515–529.

46.

Kelion

(2020, September 2). Coronavirus: Facebook Twitter and YouTube “fail to tackle anti-vaccination posts.” BBC. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54001894

47.

Kim

Cao

(2016) The impact of exposure to media messages promoting government conspiracy theories on distrust in the government: Evidence from a two-stage randomized experiment. International Journal of Communication 10: 3808–3827.

48.

Kouzy

Abi Jaoude

Kraitem

El Alam

Karam

Adib

, et al. (2020) Coronavirus goes viral: Quantifying the COVID-19 misinformation epidemic on Twitter. Cureus 12(3): e7255.

49.

Ladd

(2004) Attitudes toward the News Media and the Acquisition of Political Information. In: Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, 2–5 September.

50.

Ladd

(2010) The role of media distrust in partisan voting. Political Behavior 32(4): 567–585.

51.

Lazer

Baum

Benkler

Berinsky

Greenhill

Menczer

, et al. (2018) The science of fake news. Science 359(6380): 1094–1096.

52.

Lee

(2010) Why they don’t trust the media: An examination of factors predicting trust. American Behavioral Scientist 54(1): 8–21.

53.

Lewandowsky

Ecker

Seifert

Schwarz

Cook

(2012) Misinformation and its correction continued influence and successful debiasing. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 13(3): 106–131.

54.

Lewandowsky

Gignac

Oberauer

(2015) The robust relationship between conspiracism and denial of (climate) science. Psychological Science 26: 667–670.

55.

Lewandowsky

Oberauer

Gignac

(2013) NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax. Psychological Science 24(5): 622–633.

56.

Lin

Zhang

Song

Omori

(2016) Health information seeking in the Web 2.0 age: Trust in social media, uncertainty reduction, and self-disclosure. Computers in Human Behavior 56: 289–294.

57.

Lovelace

Jr (2020, July 22). Bill Gates denies conspiracy theories that say he wants to use coronavirus vaccines to implant tracking devices. CNBC. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/22/bill-gates-denies-conspiracy-theories-that-say-he-wants-to-use-coronavirus-vaccines-to-implant-tracking-devices.html

58.

Mitchell

Gottfried

Stocking

Walker

Fedeli

(2019) Many Americans say made up news is a critical problem that needs to be fixed. Pew Research Center. Available at: https://www.journalism.org/2019/06/05/many-americans-say-made-up-news-is-a-critical-problem-that-needs-to-be-fixed/

59.

Nekmat

(2020) Nudge effect of fact-check alerts: Source influence and media skepticism on sharing of news misinformation in social media. Social Media + Society 6: 1–14.

60.

Newman

Fletcher

Kalogeropoulos

Levy

Nielsen

(2018) Reuters institute digital news report 2018. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3245355

61.

Nyhan

Reifler

(2010) When corrections fail: The persistence of political misperceptions. Political Behavior 3: 302–330.

62.

O’Connor

(2020) Going viral: Doctors must tackle fake news in the Covid-19 pandemic. BMJ 369: m1587.

63.

Oeldorf-Hirsch

(2018) The role of engagement in learning from active and incidental news exposure on social media. Mass Communication and Society 21(2): 225–247.

64.

Paolacci

Chandler

(2014) Inside the Turk: Understanding mechanical turk as a participant pool. Current Directions in Psychological Science 23(3): 184–188.

65.

Pennycook

McPhetres

Zhang

Rand

(2020) Fighting COVID-19 misinformation on social media: Experimental evidence for a scalable accuracy-nudge intervention. Psychological Science 31(7): 770–780.

66.

Pew Research Center (2020) Nearly Three-in-ten Americans Believe COVID-19 was made in a lab. Available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/08/nearly-three-in-ten-americans-believe-covid-19-was-made-in-a-lab/

67.

Rideout

Fox

(2018) Digital health practices, social media use, and mental well being among teens and young adults in the U.S. Available at: https://www.hopelab.org/reports/pdf/a-national-survey-by-hopelab-and-well-being-trust-2018.pdf

68.

Rishel

(2011) Digitizing deliberation: Normative concerns for the use of social media in deliberative democracy. Administrative Theory & Praxis 33(3): 411–432.

69.

Sharma

Yadav

Ferdinand

(2017) Zika virus pandemic—analysis of Facebook as a social media health information platform. American Journal of Infection Control 45: 301–302.

70.

Shearer

Grieco

(2019) Americans are wary of the role social media sites play in delivering the news. Pew Research Center. Available at: https://www.journalism.org/2019/06/05/many-americans-say-made-up-news-is-a-critical-problem-that-needs-to-be-fixed/

71.

Shearer

Matsa

(2018) News use across social media platforms 2018. Pew Research Center. Available at: https://www.journalism.org/2019/10/02/americans-are-wary-of-the-role-social-media-sites-play-in-delivering-the-news/

72.

Shin

Jian

Driscoll

Bar

(2018) The diffusion of misinformation on social media: Temporal pattern, message, and source. Computers in Human Behavior 83: 278–287.

73.

Slack

(2017) Trump to CNN: “You are fake news.” USA Today. Available at: https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/96447880

74.

Statista (2020, June 23). Share of Adults Who Use Social Media as a Source of News in Selected Countries Worldwide as of February 2020. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/718019/social-media-news-source/

75.

Sterrett

Malato

Benz

Kantor

Tompson

Rosenstiel

, et al. (2019) Who shared it?: Deciding what news to trust on social media. Digital Journalism 7(6): 783–801.

76.

Stojanov

(2015) Reducing Conspiracy Theory Beliefs. Psihologija 48(3): 251–266.

77.

Thorson

(2016) Belief echoes: The persistent effects of corrected misinformation. Political Communication 33(3): 460–480.

78.

Tsfati

(2002) The consequences of mistrust in the news media: Media skepticism as a moderator in media effects and as a factor influencing news media exposure. Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI 3043970. Available at: https://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI3043970

79.

Turcotte

York

Irving

Scholl

Pingree

(2015) News recommendations from social media opinion leaders: Effects on media trust and information seeking. Journal of Computer-mediated Communication 20(5): 520–535.

80.

Viviani

Pasi

(2017) Credibility in social media: Opinions, news, and health information—a survey. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery 7(5): e1209.

81.

Vraga

Bode

(2017) Using expert sources to correct health misinformation in social media. Science Communication 39(5): 621–645.

82.

Vraga

Tully

(2019) News literacy, social media behaviors, and skepticism toward information on social media. Information Communication & Society. Epub ahead of print 18 July. DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2019.1637445.

83.

Vraga

Bode

Tully

(2020) Creating news literacy messages to enhance expert corrections of misinformation on Twitter. Communication Research. Epub ahead of print 30 January. DOI: 10.1177/0093650219898094.

84.

Vraga

Tully

Bode

(2020) Empowering users to respond to misinformation about Covid-19. Media and Communication 8(2): 475–479.

85.

Wang

Mark

(2013). Trust in online news: Comparing social media and official media use by Chinese citizens. In: Proceedings of the 2013 conference on computer supported cooperative work, San Antonio, TX, 23–27 February, pp. 599–610. New York: ACM.

86.

Weeks

Garrett

(2014) Electoral consequences of political rumors: Motivated reasoning, candidate rumors, and vote choice during the 2008 U.S. presidential election. International Journal of Public Opinion Research 26(4): 401–422.

87.

Weeks

Gil

Zúñiga

(2019) What’s Next? Six Observations for the Future of Political Misinformation Research. American Behavioral Scientist 65: 277–289.

88.

Williams

(2012) Trust or bust? Questioning the relationship between media trust and news attention. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 56(1): 116–131.

89.

Wood

(2016) Some dare call it conspiracy: Labeling something a conspiracy theory does not reduce belief in it. Political Psychology 27(5): 695–705.

90.

Wood

Douglas

Sutton

(2012) Dead and alive: Beliefs in contradictory conspiracy theories. Social Psychological and Personality Science 3(6): 767–773.

91.

Yamamoto

Morey

(2019) Incidental news exposure on social media: A campaign communication mediation approach. Social Media+ Society 5(2): 2056305119843619.

92.

Young

(2002) Inclusion and Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.12 MB