Study Reveals Social Media Users Share News Without Reading, Driving Misinformation

According to a new study, most social media users repost news links without reading them first or verifying its content. In this era of media and technology, most people remain up to date on news through social media, where all types of news are available just one click away. But this is also helping in the spread of misinformation on the internet because a lot of people are not reading articles completely before sharing them on social media sites like Facebook.

An analysis of 35 million Facebook posts between 2017 and 2020 found that politically extreme content gets shared right away without any clicks. Users believing in some certain parties also share links without reading the full article if the content seems aligned with their existing beliefs. The study also found that there is a difference between links being shared by liberal and conservative social media users. 76.9% of the conservative users on social media shared more misinformation than 14.3% of liberals. 76% to 82% of the links containing misinformation also emerged from conservative news sites.

The researchers of the study say that news content being shared on social media is linked to what is written in headlines or blurbs rather than what the actual content is. This is being called ideological segregation in the online world by the researchers because users are not verifying information as it is just talking about their existing beliefs. This study raises questions about social media design and information literacy among people. Social media sites like Meta should take some steps and implement some solutions to decrease link sharing misinformation.

Image: DIW-Aigen

H/T: University of Florida

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World