IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/meanco/v9y2021i1p134-143.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

From Dark to Light: The Many Shades of Sharing Misinformation Online

Author

Listed:
  • Miriam J. Metzger

    (Department of Communication, University of California, USA)

  • Andrew J. Flanagin

    (Department of Communication, University of California, USA)

  • Paul Mena

    (Writing Program, University of California, USA)

  • Shan Jiang

    (Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University, USA)

  • Christo Wilson

    (Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University, USA)

Abstract

Research typically presumes that people believe misinformation and propagate it through their social networks. Yet, a wide range of motivations for sharing misinformation might impact its spread, as well as people’s belief of it. By examining research on motivations for sharing news information generally, and misinformation specifically, we derive a range of motivations that broaden current understandings of the sharing of misinformation to include factors that may to some extent mitigate the presumed dangers of misinformation for society. To illustrate the utility of our viewpoint we report data from a preliminary study of people’s dis/belief reactions to misinformation shared on social media using natural language processing. Analyses of over 2,5 million comments demonstrate that misinformation on social media is often disbelieved. These insights are leveraged to propose directions for future research that incorporate a more inclusive understanding of the various motivations and strategies for sharing misinformation socially in large-scale online networks.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:134-143
    DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3409
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3409
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/mac.v9i1.3409?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:134-143. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.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.