Seeing Is Believing? How Including a Video in Fake News Influences Users’ Reporting of Fake News to Social Media Platforms
Authors: Wang, Shuting (Ada); Pang, Min-Seok; Pavlou, Paul A.
Journal: MIS Quarterly (2022)
<jats:p>Social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, are combating the spread of fake news by developing systems that allow their users to report fake news. However, it remains unclear whether these reporting systems that harness the “wisdom of the crowd” are effective. Notably, concerns have been raised that the popularity of videos may hamper users’ reporting of fake news. The persuasive power of videos may render fake news more deceptive and less likely to be reported in practice. However, this is neither theoretically nor empirically straightforward, as videos not only affect users’ ability to detect fake news, but also impact their willingness to report and their engagement (i.e., likes, shares, and comments) which would further spread fake news. Using a unique dataset from a leading social media platform, we empirically examine how including a video in a fake news post affects the number of users reporting the post to the platform. Our results indicate that including a video significantly increases the number of users reporting the fake news post to the social media platform. Additionally, we find that the sentiment intensity of the fake news text conten…