IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsoctx/v11y2021i3p82-d595397.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Toward a Comprehensive Model of Fake News: A New Approach to Examine the Creation and Sharing of False Information

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew P. Weiss

    (University Library, California State University, Northridge, CA 91330, USA)

  • Ahmed Alwan

    (University Library, California State University, Northridge, CA 91330, USA)

  • Eric P. Garcia

    (University Library, California State University, Northridge, CA 91330, USA)

  • Antranik T. Kirakosian

    (Department of Psychology, California State University, Northridge, CA 91330, USA)

Abstract

The authors discuss a new conceptual model to examine the phenomenon of fake news. Their model focuses on the relationship between the creator and the consumer of fake news and proposes a mechanism by which to determine how likely users may be to share fake news with others. In particular, it is hypothesized that information users would likely be influenced by seven factors in choosing to share fake news or to verify information, including the user’s: (1) level of online trust; (2) level of self-disclosure online; (3) amount of social comparison; (4) level of FoMO anxiety; (5) level of social media fatigue; (6) concept of self and role identity; and (7) level of education attainment. The implications reach into many well-established avenues of inquiry in education, Library and Information Science (LIS), sociology, and other disciplines, including communities of practice, information acquiring and sharing, social positioning, social capital theory, self-determination, rational choice (e.g., satisficing and information overload), critical thinking, and information literacy. Understanding the multiple root causes of creating and sharing fake news will help to alleviate its spread. Relying too heavily on but one factor to combat fake news—education level, for example—may have limited impact on mitigating its effects. Establishing thresholds for a certain combination of factors may better predict the tendency of users to share fake news. The authors also speculate on the role information literacy education programs can play in light of a more complex understanding of how fake news operates.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew P. Weiss & Ahmed Alwan & Eric P. Garcia & Antranik T. Kirakosian, 2021. "Toward a Comprehensive Model of Fake News: A New Approach to Examine the Creation and Sharing of False Information," Societies, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-17, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:11:y:2021:i:3:p:82-:d:595397
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/11/3/82/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/11/3/82/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Seoyong Kim & Sunhee Kim, 2020. "The Crisis of Public Health and Infodemic: Analyzing Belief Structure of Fake News about COVID-19 Pandemic," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(23), pages 1-23, November.
    2. Hunt Allcott & Matthew Gentzkow, 2017. "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election," NBER Working Papers 23089, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Hunt Allcott & Matthew Gentzkow & Chuan Yu, 2019. "Trends in the Diffusion of Misinformation on Social Media," NBER Working Papers 25500, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Elfreda A. Chatman, 1996. "The impoverished life‐world of outsiders," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 47(3), pages 193-206, March.
    5. Atanu Sengupta & Sanjoy De, 2020. "Review of Literature," India Studies in Business and Economics, in: Assessing Performance of Banks in India Fifty Years After Nationalization, chapter 0, pages 15-30, Springer.
    6. 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.
    7. Thara Ravindran & Alton Chua Yeow Kuan & Dion Goh Hoe Lian, 2014. "Antecedents and effects of social network fatigue," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 65(11), pages 2306-2320, November.
    8. Hunt Allcott & Matthew Gentzkow, 2017. "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 211-236, Spring.
    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. Domenico, Giandomenico Di & Sit, Jason & Ishizaka, Alessio & Nunan, Daniel, 2021. "Fake news, social media and marketing: A systematic review," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 329-341.
    2. Leopoldo Fergusson & Carlos Molina, 2020. "Facebook Causes Protests," HiCN Working Papers 323, Households in Conflict Network.
    3. Michele Cantarella & Nicolo' Fraccaroli & Roberto Volpe, 2019. "Does fake news affect voting behaviour?," Department of Economics 0146, University of Modena and Reggio E., Faculty of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    4. Bartosz Wilczek, 2020. "Misinformation and herd behavior in media markets: A cross-national investigation of how tabloids’ attention to misinformation drives broadsheets’ attention to misinformation in political and business," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-22, November.
    5. 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).
    6. Laura Studen & Victor Tiberius, 2020. "Social Media, Quo Vadis? Prospective Development and Implications," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 12(9), pages 1-22, August.
    7. Adrian Kwek & Luke Peh & Josef Tan & Jin Xing Lee, 2023. "Distractions, analytical thinking and falling for fake news: A survey of psychological factors," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-12, December.
    8. Miriam J. Metzger & Andrew J. Flanagin & Paul Mena & Shan Jiang & Christo Wilson, 2021. "From Dark to Light: The Many Shades of Sharing Misinformation Online," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(1), pages 134-143.
    9. 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.
    10. Raúl Rodríguez-Ferrándiz & Cande Sánchez-Olmos & Tatiana Hidalgo-Marí & Estela Saquete-Boro, 2021. "Memetics of Deception: Spreading Local Meme Hoaxes during COVID-19 1st Year," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-19, June.
    11. João Pedro Baptista & Anabela Gradim, 2020. "Understanding Fake News Consumption: A Review," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(10), pages 1-22, October.
    12. Matilde Giaccherini & Joanna Kopinska & Gabriele Rovigatti, 2022. "Vax Populi: The Social Costs of Online Vaccine Skepticism," CESifo Working Paper Series 10184, CESifo.
    13. Jost, Peter J. & Pünder, Johanna & Schulze-Lohoff, Isabell, 2020. "Fake news - Does perception matter more than the truth?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    14. Hsin‐Hui Lin & Ching‐Feng Chen & Chih‐Lun Wu, 2023. "The effects of news authenticity and social media tie strength on consumer dissemination behavior," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(4), pages 2292-2313, June.
    15. Daniel-Rareș Obadă & Dan-Cristian Dabija, 2022. "“In Flow”! Why Do Users Share Fake News about Environmentally Friendly Brands on Social Media?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(8), pages 1-26, April.
    16. Artem Zakharchenko & Tomáš Peráček & Solomiia Fedushko & Yuriy Syerov & Olha Trach, 2021. "When Fact-Checking and ‘BBC Standards’ Are Helpless: ‘Fake Newsworthy Event’ Manipulation and the Reaction of the ‘High-Quality Media’ on It," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-13, January.
    17. Ryan C. Moore & Ross Dahlke & Jeffrey T. Hancock, 2023. "Exposure to untrustworthy websites in the 2020 US election," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 7(7), pages 1096-1105, July.
    18. Giancarlo Ruffo & Alfonso Semeraro, 2022. "FakeNewsLab: Experimental Study on Biases and Pitfalls Preventing Us from Distinguishing True from False News," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 14(10), pages 1-24, September.
    19. Zagidullin, Marat & Aziz, Nergis & Kozhakhmet, Sanat, 2021. "Government policies and attitudes to social media use among users in Turkey: The role of awareness of policies, political involvement, online trust, and party identification," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    20. Christopher Adamo & Jeffrey Carpenter, 2023. "Sentiment and the belief in fake news during the 2020 presidential primaries," Oxford Open Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 2, pages 512-547.

    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:jsoctx:v:11:y:2021:i:3:p:82-:d:595397. 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.