The mediating role of comments’ credibility in influencing cancer cure misperceptions and social sharing

Abstract

The rise of fake news is an increasing issue for cancer patients. Specifically, the use of cannabis as a cure for cancer is the most shared social media content regarding alternative cancer treatments (Shi, Siyu, Arthur R. Brant, Aaron Sabolch & Erqi Pollom. 2019. False news of a cannabis cancer cure. Cureus 11(1). e3918. DOI:10.7759/cureus.3918). To better understand the relationship between fake news, perceived credibility, social sharing, and belief in health misinformation, we conducted an online experiment in the United States to explore how people react to fake cancer news on Facebook.

Keywords

• backfire effect
• comments’ credibility
• experiment
• expert corrections
• facebook
• health misinformation
• the united states