IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v19y2022i18p11752-d917787.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What Drives People to Share Misinformation on Social Media during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Stimulus-Organism-Response Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Manli Wu

    (School of Journalism and Information Communication, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China)

Abstract

(1) Background: Misinformation is prevalent on social media in the age of COVID-19, exacerbating the threat of the pandemic. Uncovering the processes underlying people’s misinformation sharing using social media assists people to cope with misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study extends the stimulus-organism-response framework to examine how individuals’ social media dependency relates to their misinformation sharing behavior, with a focus on the underlying processes. (2) Methods: A total of 393 valid questionnaires were collected using a survey method to test the proposed research model. (3) Results: The results demonstrate that informational dependency and social dependency engender both positive and negative cognitive states, namely perceived information timeliness, perceived socialization and social overload, which then invoke positive as well as negative affect. What is more, the results show that both positive affect and negative affect can engender misinformation sharing. (4) Conclusions: Theoretically, this study uncovers the processes that lead to misinformation sharing on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. Practically, this study provides actionable guidelines on how to manage social media usage and social media content to cope with misinformation sharing during the pandemic.

Suggested Citation

  • Manli Wu, 2022. "What Drives People to Share Misinformation on Social Media during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Stimulus-Organism-Response Perspective," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(18), pages 1-18, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:18:p:11752-:d:917787
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/18/11752/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/18/11752/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kizgin, Hatice & Jamal, Ahmad & Rana, Nripendra & Dwivedi, Yogesh & Weerakkody, Vishanth, 2019. "The impact of social networking sites on socialization and political engagement: Role of acculturation," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 503-512.
    2. Laato, Samuli & Islam, A.K.M. Najmul & Farooq, Ali & Dhir, Amandeep, 2020. "Unusual purchasing behavior during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic: The stimulus-organism-response approach," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    3. Ronald T. Cenfetelli & Andrew Schwarz, 2011. "Identifying and Testing the Inhibitors of Technology Usage Intentions," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 22(4), pages 808-823, December.
    4. Islam, A.K.M. Najmul & Laato, Samuli & Talukder, Shamim & Sutinen, Erkki, 2020. "Misinformation sharing and social media fatigue during COVID-19: An affordance and cognitive load perspective," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    5. Talwar, Shalini & Dhir, Amandeep & Kaur, Puneet & Zafar, Nida & Alrasheedy, Melfi, 2019. "Why do people share fake news? Associations between the dark side of social media use and fake news sharing behavior," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 72-82.
    6. Reinartz, Werner & Haenlein, Michael & Henseler, Jörg, 2009. "An empirical comparison of the efficacy of covariance-based and variance-based SEM," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 332-344.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Liu, Hongfei & Liu, Wentong & Yoganathan, Vignesh & Osburg, Victoria-Sophie, 2021. "COVID-19 information overload and generation Z's social media discontinuance intention during the pandemic lockdown," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    2. Sharma, Manu & Kaushal, Deepak & Joshi, Sudhanshu, 2023. "Adverse effect of social media on generation Z user's behavior: Government information support as a moderating variable," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    3. Bermes, Alena, 2021. "Information overload and fake news sharing: A transactional stress perspective exploring the mitigating role of consumers’ resilience during COVID-19," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    4. Talwar, Manish & Talwar, Shalini & Kaur, Puneet & Tripathy, Naliniprava & Dhir, Amandeep, 2021. "Has financial attitude impacted the trading activity of retail investors during the COVID-19 pandemic?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    5. Hsu, Sheila Hsuan-Yu & Tsou, Hung-Tai & Chen, Ja-Shen, 2021. "“Yes, we do. Why not use augmented reality?†customer responses to experiential presentations of AR-based applications," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    6. Nanath, Krishnadas & Balasubramanian, Sreejith & Shukla, Vinaya & Islam, Nazrul & Kaitheri, Supriya, 2022. "Developing a mental health index using a machine learning approach: Assessing the impact of mobility and lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    7. Tandon, Anushree & Dhir, Amandeep & Talwar, Shalini & Kaur, Puneet & Mäntymäki, Matti, 2021. "Dark consequences of social media-induced fear of missing out (FoMO): Social media stalking, comparisons, and fatigue," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    8. Naeem, Muhammad & Ozuem, Wilson, 2021. "The role of social media in internet banking transition during COVID-19 pandemic: Using multiple methods and sources in qualitative research," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    9. Kaur, Puneet & Islam, Nazrul & Tandon, Anushree & Dhir, Amandeep, 2021. "Social media users’ online subjective well-being and fatigue: A network heterogeneity perspective," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    10. Kumar, Sushant & Shah, Arunima, 2021. "Revisiting food delivery apps during COVID-19 pandemic? Investigating the role of emotions," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    11. Pang, Hua & Ruan, Yang, 2023. "Determining influences of information irrelevance, information overload and communication overload on WeChat discontinuance intention: The moderating role of exhaustion," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    12. Stephanie Rodriguez-Besteiro & Ana Isabel Beltran-Velasco & José Francisco Tornero-Aguilera & Marina Begoña Martínez-González & Eduardo Navarro-Jiménez & Rodrigo Yáñez-Sepúlveda & Vicente Javier Cleme, 2023. "Social Media, Anxiety and COVID-19 Lockdown Measurement Compliance," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(5), pages 1-13, March.
    13. Khan, Ali Nawaz, 2021. "A diary study of psychological effects of misinformation and COVID-19 Threat on work engagement of working from home employees," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    14. Talwar, Manish & Talwar, Shalini & Kaur, Puneet & Islam, A.K.M. Najmul & Dhir, Amandeep, 2021. "Positive and negative word of mouth (WOM) are not necessarily opposites: A reappraisal using the dual factor theory," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    15. Kumar, Sushant & Murphy, Mikko & Talwar, Shalini & Kaur, Puneet & Dhir, Amandeep, 2021. "What drives brand love and purchase intentions toward the local food distribution system? A study of social media-based REKO (fair consumption) groups," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    16. Balakrishnan, Vimala & Ng, Kee S. & Rahim, Hajar Abdul, 2021. "To share or not to share – The underlying motives of sharing fake news amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    17. Kumar, Aman & Shankar, Amit & Behl, Abhishek & Arya, Varsha & Gupta, Nakul, 2023. "Should I share it? Factors influencing fake news-sharing behaviour: A behavioural reasoning theory perspective," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    18. Wilawan Jansri, 2019. "Perception of Residents, Community Participation and Support for Tourism Development in the Old Town Muang Songkhla, Thailand," Proceedings of the 13th International RAIS Conference, June 10-11, 2019 07WJ, Research Association for Interdisciplinary Studies.
    19. Philippe Cohard, 2020. "Information Systems Values: A Study of the Intranet in Three French Higher Education Institutions," Post-Print hal-02987225, HAL.
    20. Lirios Alos-Simo & Antonio J. Verdu-Jover & Jose M. Gomez-Gras, 2020. "Knowledge Transfer in Sustainable Contexts: A Comparative Analysis of Periods of Financial Recession and Expansion," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-24, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:18:p:11752-:d:917787. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.