Effects of Credibility Indicators on Social Media News Sharing Intent

Abstract

In recent years, social media services have been leveraged to spread fake news stories. Helping people spot fake stories by marking them with credibility indicators could dissuade them from sharing such stories, thus reducing their amplification. We carried out an online study (N = 1,512) to explore the impact of four types of credibility indicators on people's intent to share news headlines with their friends on social media. We confirmed that credibility indicators can indeed decrease the propensity to share fake news. However, the impact of the indicators varied, with fact checking services being the most effective. We further found notable differences in responses to the indicators based on demographic and personal characteristics and social media usage frequency. Our findings have important implications for curbing the spread of misinformation via social media platforms.