The Social Media Context Interferes with Truth Discernment

There is widespread concern about fake news and other misinformation circulating on social media. In particular, many argue that the context of social media itself may make people particularly susceptible to the influence of false claims. Here, we test that claim by asking whether simply considering whether to share news on social media reduces people’s ability to identify truth versus falsehood. In a large online experiment (N=3,157 Americans quota-matched to the national distribution of age, gender, ethnicity, and geographic region) examining COVID-19 and political news, we find support for this possibility. Compared to a baseline where participants judged only the accuracy of each headline, we observed worse truth discernment when participants also indicated their sharing intentions. Conversely, sharing discernment was substantially higher when participants also rated accuracy, relative to a baseline where sharing intentions were elicited without rating accuracy. These results suggest people may be particularly vulnerable to believing false claims on social media due to fundamental features of these platforms – which is particularly concerning given that it is hard to imagine social media without sharing.