Cleaning Up Social Media: The Effect of Warning Labels on Likelihood of Sharing False News on Facebook

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Top Highlights

• tendency of people to perceive greater media influence on others than on themselves, the theory of the TPE involves a behavioral component,

• change attitudes or behaviors as a result of the perceived influence of communication on others

• people will tend to overestimate the influence that mass communications have on the attitudes and behavior of others”

• In this way, drawing on research on correcting misinformation, message credibility, and the TPE, this study contributes to the understanding of social media users’ behaviors regarding the sharing of false news stories.

• The flagging of false news may have an impact on decreasing the sharing of false news on social media by diminishing the credibility of misleading information.

• e flagging of false news had a significant effect on reducing false news sharing intentions

• respondents who saw a fabricated Facebook post with a warning label had lower intentions to share that content than those who did not see the flag

• warning label still had an effect on decreasing the likelihood of sharing false news when respondents saw the fabricated Facebook post and a false news article supporting the deceiving information contained in the post.

• controlling for political leaning, the effect of the warning label on sharing intentions remained significan

• Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, the warning label reduced false news sharing intentions. However, it was found that Democrats and Independents were more likely than Republicans to share the false news post both when the warning label was absent and when it was present.

• the flagging of false news decreases the credibility of a false news Facebook post

• association between the flagging of false news and message credibility

• message credibility and false news sharing intentions

• message credibility may play concerning the sharing of deceiving information

• credibility labels potentially instigate more critical processing of media messages

• warning labels will not be enough to curb the spread of misinformation on social media

• credibility label, as well as other social media functions (Bode & Vraga, 2015), may contribute to discourage the sharing of false news and help users differentiate between true and false news storie

• warnings at the time of the initial exposure to misleading information may certainly decrease the impact of misinformation

• TPE may play a major role in people’s perceptions of the sharing of false news and the effect of the flagging of false news

• difference in perceptions of the likelihood of sharing the misleading Facebook post between self and others was large