What Makes Fake News Appeal to You? Empirical Evidence from the Tweets Related to COVID-19 Vaccines

Abstract

Social media has become a popular means for users to accept and share the news. At the same time, however, it has also enabled the wide spread of fake news. The negative impact of fake news on society has been rapidly increased. To mitigate this problem, this study aims to find out the effect of social media users’ types of perception of information toward the acceptance and intention of spreading fake news. We conducted an online experiment with 743 of social media users and showed the following results. First, users respond differently depending on the type of message provider even if the same fake news. Second, users who relied more on experiential information processing system were more likely to accept fake news regardless of their perceived social conformity.