Date of Award
August 2020
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Media Studies
Advisor(s)
Tamara M. Chock
Keywords
Credibility, Dual-Process Theory, Fake News, Partisanship, Social Media
Subject Categories
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
The objective of this study is to examine how the information processing of news users happens on social media in the context of spreading fake news. This study is intended to shed light on how fake news spreads on social media with the effects of two moderators (i.e., partisanship and source credibility) from political attitude consistency to message credibility and the effect of mediation (i.e., cognitive appraisal to threat) from message credibility to intent to share fake news on social media and corrective action. As a theoretical lens, dual-process theories were adopted in this paper. For this, a 2 (news topic: Immigration vs. Gun control) X 2 (news topic stance: Positive vs. Negative) X 2 (source: major (i.e., Associated Press) vs. minor (i.e., blog news) between-subject online experiment with 507 participants was conducted for both immigration and gun control topics. As a result, in the moderation effects, although partisanship was significant for both topic immigration and gun control news, source credibility was significant only for immigration news. Plus, the mediation effect of the cognitive appraisal to threats was significant between message credibility and the intent to share fake news on social media for both news topics. Lastly, even though the relations between message credibility and corrective action had to be negatively associated, they were positively correlated.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Kim, Se Jung, "How do People Process and Share Fake News on Social Media?: In the context of Dual-Process of Credibility with Partisanship, Cognitive Appraisal to Threat, and Corrective Action" (2020). Theses - ALL. 442.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/442
