08:30 - 10:00
Tue-HS3-Talk IV-
Tue-Talk IV-
Room: HS3
Chair/s:
Michael Geers
Misinformation poses a serious challenge to societies and democracies worldwide. This symposium brings together novel methodological approaches and empirical insights on the psychology of misinformation, but also critically discusses current research practices and paradigms. Talk 1 (Lena Nadarevic, University of Mannheim) introduces an experiment testing the effectiveness of warnings against the truth effect in a simulated social media environment. Talk 2 (Mubashir Sultan, Max Planck Institute for Human Development) presents a meta-analysis on news veracity judgments of misinformation. It will aggregate previous findings, highlighting pertinent trends for the predictors of misinformation susceptibility, including demographics (e.g., age, political identity), analytical thinking, partisan bias, and the illusory truth effect. Talk 3 (Michael Geers, Max Planck Institute for Human Development) introduces a task analysis that identifies the processes required for users to share true content online. It also highlights some cognitive and motivational challenges for sharing true content, maps interventions, and identifies open research questions. Finally, a panel discussion critically discusses the current state of misinformation research, including reflections on the ecological validity of experimental paradigms and the extent to which some work on misinformation has come short of building on previous psychological research. Next to the speakers of talks 1-3, the discussion features Pia Lamberty, co-director of the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS). She studies how people at the center of society are radicalized by conspiracy theories and reject democracy altogether, and her real-world experience may offer a new perspective that many experimental psychologists do not have.
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How do motives for sharing relate to content features on Twitter?
Tue-HS3-Talk IV-03
Presented by: Michael Geers
Philipp Lorenz-Spreen 1, Anastasia Kozyreva 1, Michael Geers 1, 2, Briony Swire-Thompson 3, Stefan Herzog 1, Ralph Hertwig 1
1 Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 2 Humboldt University of Berlin, 3 Northeastern University
Nearly four billion people around the world now use social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, and social media is one of the primary ways people share information with others. Often the implicit assumption when studying this behavior is for people to share content to inform others, but there might be several other motives at play. Here, we devise a novel experimental paradigm linking survey data (i.e., users’ motives for sharing) with behavioral Twitter data (i.e., users’ tweets) in a sample of N = 200 U.S. Twitter users over a period of six weeks, spanning March to May 2022. Our results suggest that most users share information to draw attention to a topic, express their opinion, and connect with others. These general motives for sharing differ across demographics, such as age, gender, and education. When linking users’ motives for sharing information to the tweet content characteristics, we reveal distinct topic-motive patterns: Most users shared content about the COVID-19 pandemic to draw attention to an issue; shared content about the Russian invasion of Ukraine to inform others; and expressed their opinion when tweeting about U.S. politics (e.g., Trump vs. Biden). Moreover, popular content is shared to entertain others and less popular content is shared to connect with the authors. These results contribute to the scholarly understanding of social media users' behavior and its dependence on the information context, and can inform interventions against detrimental sharing behaviors.
Keywords: misinformation, sharing, social media, motives, content characteristics
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