Spreading Disinformation on Facebook: Do Trust in Message Source, Risk Propensity, or Personality Affect the Organic Reach of “Fake News”?

Tom Buchanan*, Vladlena Benson

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

There is considerable concern about the propagation of disinformation through social media, particularly for political purposes. “Organic reach” has been found to be important in the propagation of disinformation on social networks. This is the phenomenon whereby social media users extend the audience for a piece of information: interacting with it, or sharing it with their wider networks, greatly increases the number of people the information reaches. This project evaluated the extent to which characteristics of the message source (how trustworthy they were) and the recipient (risk propensity and personality) influenced the organic reach of a potentially false message. In an online study, 357 Facebook users completed personality and risk propensity scales and rated their likelihood of interacting in various ways with a message posted by either a trustworthy or untrustworthy source. Message source impacted on overall organic reach, with messages from trusted sources being more likely to be propagated. Risk propensity did not influence reach. However, low scores on trait agreeableness predicted greater likelihood of interacting with a message. The findings provide preliminary evidence that both message source and recipient characteristics can potentially influence the spread of disinformation.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-9
Number of pages9
JournalSocial Media and Society
Volume5
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Oct 2019

Bibliographical note

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Keywords

  • disinformation
  • Facebook
  • fake news
  • organic reach
  • personality traits
  • social media

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