Combating health misinformation through fact-checking - the role of active versus passive social media involvement (Preprint)

Abstract

Health information fact-checking has been identified as a potential solution to combat the spread of misinformation on social media. Therefore, it is crucial to understand what factors are associated with individuals’ fact-checking behaviors on health (mis)information.

The objective of this study is to examine how two types of social media involvement (active vs. passive) affect individuals’ fact-checking behaviors.

A cross-sectional online survey was conducted in China to collect the data. The final sample consisted of 600 social media users. Descriptive statistics and correlational analyses were performed to explore the relationships between key variables.

The results indicated that passive and active social media involvement were negatively and positively associated with health information fact-checking, respectively. Further analysis revealed that the association between the two ways of social media involvement and health information fact-checking was mediated by social media fatigue and moderated by health information literacy.

Various ways in which people are involved with social media can bring different health information outcomes. Active involvement correlates with higher fact-checking possibility. Decreasing social media fatigue and enhancing health information literacy are crucial for countering the proliferation of misinformation.