Effects of Time Pressure, Reward, and Information Involvement on User Management of Fake News on a Social Media Platform

Abstract

This study examined the effects of time pressure, reward, and information involvement on individual fact-checking behavior within a social media platform. We used a four-factor mixed-design experiment to examine fact-checking performances of 144 participants for 36 ambiguous social platform statements, all of which were news statements of social events or of common-sense knowledge collected from the internet and selected through pre-test screening. We measured the participants’ total number of fact-checked statements and their judgment accuracy of those statements. We also measured participants’ decision time for making judgments, and their judgment confidence levels. Participants’ social presence, time pressure, and information involvement were significantly related to the number of statements they fact-checked. Their perceived social presence on a social media platform reduced their fact-checking. Time pressure increased the frequency of fact-checking and weakened the impact of social presence. Participants were less likely to fact-check statements when they had high involvement with the information, due to overconfidence. Statements with high information involvement had longer decision-making times. These findings provide a basis for designing ways to display and push information to increase an individual’s awareness of a need to fact-check ambiguous information in a new social media environment.