Why Do People Believe and Share Fake News?
How it may impact society and how to overcome it in the era of social media
During the post-truth era, facts and evidence have frequently been replaced by personal belief and emotion. The development of digital technology, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), helps us to filter zillion of news on the internet and tries to recommend us news related to our preferences. This personalization makes us rarely receive news that we do not prefer to see. In between these massive numbers of news over the internet, fake news can be defined as a knowingly false headline or story that is written and published on a website, which is designed to look like a real news site and is spread via social media¹. For several parties, spreading fake news can generate benefits for them.
Electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) generated from social media can be a double-edged sword, which can bring both positive and negative impacts toward an object. e-WOM can help a firm enhance its reputation and performance², while the exposure to social media intensifies WOM and that reactions of consumers exposed to brand issues on social media are more negative as compared to those exposed through traditional media³. Any fake news shared by the consumers can have damaging consequences by negatively impacting the product or brand.
Based on Indonesian Digital Report 2020, Indonesia already has around 160 million active social media users (59% of all Indonesia population)⁴. Also based on Wabah Hoax Nasional survey in 2019, social media is the most significant contributor (87.5%) in spreading fake news in Indonesia⁵. These facts indicate the spread of fake news has become more accessible and more massive, also may reach a broader consumer target. More extremely, during Indonesian political year, there was also implemented Russian model of propaganda “firehose of falsehood”, which has two distinctive features: high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright frictions. It is also rapid, continuous, and repetitive, and it lacks commitment to consistency⁶. The massive and continuous spread of misleading news then leads the audiences to lose their orientation of which is right and which is wrong.
To add the urgency, many students in this social media generation, are not equipped, or even are not interested, with news literacy to understand the news with critical thinking, to analyze and judge the reliability of news and information and differentiate among facts, opinions, and assertions in the media. According to Indonesia literacy score that is assessed by OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), that Indonesia ranks 74 out of 79 countries in 2018, with reading performance in 2018 fell back to its 2001 level after a peak in 200⁹⁷. Also based on OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) score, adults in Jakarta show low levels of proficiency in literacy compared to adults in other countries and economies that participated in the same survey⁸. Hence, Indonesia is in an emergency to handle the massive spread of fake news through social media. What drives consumer’s motivation to keep sharing fake news and how to stop it?
Why Do People Believe in Fake News?
Those who believe in fake news may adopt at least one of these behaviors below:
ABC Model of Attitudes
Upon receiving fake news, consumers act based on emotional reactions. This reaction is similar to when consumers are performing a hedonic consumption, which is mostly motivated by the consumers’ feeling toward their experiences with the news or product or brand. Consumers tend to change their behavior first to believe the fake news, rather than thinking rationally about the news.
Source Credibility
Source credibility refers to a communicator’s expertise, objectivity, or trustworthiness⁹. Source credibility is one thing that consumers need to pay attention to when receiving the news. Some consumers still believe news delivered by an unknown source, especially forwarded news on social media such as WhatsApp or Facebook.
Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)
The source is important, but the message itself is more important. Consumers that do not pay much attention to the message credibility take the message through peripheral route. The peripheral route to persuasion highlights the paradox of low involvement, what we do not care as much about a product (in this case, the message), but more about the way it is presented increases its importance⁹. This phenomenon is related to literacy level in Indonesia that people with a low level of literacy may pay less attention to the message in the news, and pay more attention to the way it is presented.
Conformity & Bandwagon Effect
Conformity is a change in beliefs or actions as a reaction to real or imagined group pressure⁹. The tendency of changed beliefs or actions will increase as the number of individual who have the same certain beliefs or actions increases, which causes the bandwagon effect. The bandwagon effect is a phenomenon whereby the rate of uptake of beliefs, ideas, fads and trends increases the more that they have already been adopted by others¹⁰. This effect later drives them to have cognitive bias, that they ignore their rational thinking and start to believe what others believe.
Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias that involves favoring information that confirms your previously existing beliefs or biases. Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that affirms one’s prior beliefs or hypotheses¹¹.
Availability Bias
A mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person’s mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision¹². Whereas, our mind only contain very little information, compared to massive information existed out there.
False Cause Fallacy
The fallacy committed when an argument mistakenly attempts to establish a causal connection. This fallacy happens because people tend to make a causal connection between things that have no proven correlation.
Why Do People Share Fake News?
Based on a study by Talwar et al., these factors below drive social media users to share fake news online¹³:
- Users who have high online trust in the content or information shared on social media have a higher tendency to share fake news.
- Users with high self-disclosure are likely to share fake news online. Self-disclosure is related to the user’s tendency to share his or her own information on social media.
- Users who concern more about enhancing self in social comparison, do not intend to share fake news on social media because it can damage the user’s image.
- Users who have a higher feeling of Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) tend to share more fake news online.
- Users who feel more social media fatigue tend to share fake news online because they do not put much effort to validate the news.
Some theories below also support the fake news sharing phenomenon:
- Social comparison theory (SCT) — SCT explains how individuals form beliefs and opinions about their capabilities and the drive they process to evaluate their abilities¹⁴. When people are not able to assess their abilities on their own, they resort to comparing themselves with others.
- Rational choice theory (RCT) — RCT explains that individuals make choices that tend to maximize their utility¹⁵. This theory supports the phenomena about consumers that consciously decide to continue to use social media, anticipating positive outcomes rather than discontinuing its use on account of social media fatigue¹⁶.
- Self-determination theory (SDT) — SDT provides a framework for the assessment of human motivation and personality¹⁷, that people are active organisms who seek to evolve continuously to make coherent sense of self. The need for relatedness and a sense of belonging has been argued to be the primary motivation driving FOMO¹⁸.
How To Overcome The Fake News?
As the response to fight the spread of fake news on social media, collaboration from both sides are needed: the media and the consumers (social media users). It begins with increasing social awareness about the harmful effects of fake news. Once more users are exposed to how dangerous are these negative effects, they will be more likely to feel urged to fight this fake news phenomenon. Below are several recommendations that can be addressed for both parties.
For the media industry
- Focus on online trust. Media needs to build trust to consumers by consistently publishing only authentic and validated news.
- Minimize fatigue. Provide information as clear as possible, also avoid misleading headlines. This way, media can turn their consumers’ behavior in processing information, from the peripheral route to central route.
- Utilize social networks to generate positive e-WOM from other consumers. Media can also make clarifications or further explanations to counter fake news. The more real news spread on social media, the bigger the chance to avoid availability bias and the bandwagon effect.
- Give reward to consumers that are considered helpful in spotting and proving fake news. This effort can also avoid the bandwagon effect by stopping the spread.
- Commit and actively educate the consumers about the importance of understanding the whole message in the news and how to spot the fake one. Educate the consumers not to do confirmation bias and false cause fallacy.
- Conduct a campaign to increase awareness and encourage social media users to always filter the message from the news before sharing it.
For social media users
- Understand and review the context of the news first. For example, from the picture below, we can see how much difference media can make from the whole context. Validate news by reading from various sources before sharing them online. This action will avoid us from availability and confirmation biases.
- Understand the data. Sometimes, the media shows a misleading headline or even misleading data visualization. We need to be aware and understand what the data means.
- Be objective to the message of the news, not to the source that shares the news or any other substances. Process the news through the central route, not the peripheral route.
- Increase literacy for reading news and information. As the consumers of the media, we are responsible to actively read more books and news, discuss with other people, be open to various perspectives and even contradicting opinions, and also be up-to-date with technology. The more we are exposed to information, the less the chance we are going to have availability bias, confirmation bias, or false cause fallacy.
- Stop the fake news spread. If you are unsure of the righteousness of the news, do not share. This action is vital to avoid conformity and bandwagon effect to happen.
- Counter the fake news, if possible. This step can be performed after processing the message in fake news through the central route and exploring various sources.
The increasing number of social media users in this digital era is inevitable, as well as the number of fake news in it. However, we may take a role in preventing it from spreading further. Start with educating ourselves, stop the fake news spread chain, and have the integrity to speak the truth once you have managed to validate the real news.
References:
¹Rochlin, N. (2017). Fake news: belief in post-truth. Library Hi Tech, 35(3), 386–392.
²Nisar, T. M., Prabhakar, G., Ilavarasan, P. V. & Baabdullah, A. M. (2020). Up the ante: Electronic word of mouth and its effects on firm reputation and performance. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 53.
³Pace, S., Balboni, B. & Gistri, G. (2017). The effects of social media on brand attitude and WOM during a brand crisis: Evidences from the Barilla case. Journal of Marketing Communications, 23(2), 135–148.
⁴We Are Social & Hootsuite. (2020). Digital 2020: Indonesia. https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2020-indonesia
⁵Mastel. (2019). Hasil Survey Wabah Hoax Nasional 2019. Masyarakat Telematika Indonesia. https://mastel.id/hasil-survey-wabah-hoax-nasional-2019
⁶Paul, C. & Matthews, M. (2016). The Russian “firehose of falsehood” propaganda model. RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
⁷OECD. (2019). Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA): Results from PISA 2018. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/PISA2018_CN_IDN.pdf
⁸OECD. (2016). Skills Matter: Further Results from the Survey of Adult Skills. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. https://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Skills-Matter-Jakarta-Indonesia.pdf
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¹³Talwar, S., Dhir, A., Kaur, P., Zafar, N. & Alrasheedy, M. (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, 51, 72–82.
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¹⁶Logan, K., Bright, L. F. & Grau, S. L. (2018). “Unfriend me, please!”: Social media fatigue and the theory of rational choice. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 26(4), 357–367.
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¹⁸Beyens, I., Frison, E. & Eggermont, S. (2016). “I don’t want to miss a thing”: Adolescents’ fear of missing out and its relationship to adolescents’ social needs, Facebook use, and Facebook related stress. Computers in Human Behavior, 64, 1–8.
