Relating foreign disinformation through social media, domestic online media fractionalization, government's control over cyberspace, and social media-induced offline violence: Insights from the agenda-building theoretical perspective

While disinformation through social media has emerged as a new form of information operations for countries to advance their strategic interests, there is a lack of studies examining its adverse impacts. By grounding the discussion on the agenda-building theory, we theorize the relationships among four key variables of interest, namely, (1) foreign disinformation through social media, (2) domestic online media fractionalization, (3) government's control over cyberspace, and (4) social media-induced offline violence in a country. A quantitative analysis based on publicly available archival data offers support for our research model. Specifically, our findings indicate that foreign disinformation through social media increases social media-induced offline violence in a country by increasing its domestic online media fractionalization. Further, our results highlight that the relationships among foreign disinformation through social media, social media-induced offline violence, and domestic online media fractionalization in a country are contingent on the government's role in controlling its cyberspace. Implications of our findings to research and practice are discussed.