ABSTRACT
Purpose - News consumption is critical in creating informed citizenry;however, in the current context of media convergence, news consumption becomes more complex as social media becomes a primary news source rather than news media. The current study seeks to answer three questions: why the shifted pattern of news seeking only happens to some but not all of the news consumers;whether the differentiated patterns of news seeking (news media vs social media) would result in different misinformation engagement behaviors;and whether misperceptions would moderate the relationship between news consumption and misinformation engagement. Design/methodology/approach - A survey consisted of questions related to personality traits, news seeking, misperceptions and misinformation engagement was distributed to 551 individuals. Multiple standard regression and PROCESS Macro model 1 were used to examine the intricate relationships between personality, news use and misinformation engagement. Findings - Results indicate that extroversion was positively associated with social media news consumption while openness was inversely related to it. Social media news consumption in turn positively predicted greater misinformation sharing and commenting. No association was found between Big Five personality traits and news media news seeking. News media news seeking predicted higher intention to reply to misinformation. Both relationships were further moderated by misperceptions that individuals with greater misperceptions were more likely to engage with misinformation. Originality/value - The current study integrates personality traits, news consumption and misperceptions in understanding misinformation engagement behaviors. Findings suggest that news consumption via news media in the digital era merits in-depth examinations as it may associate with more complex background factors and also incur misinformation engagement. Social media news consumption deserves continuous scholarly attention. Specifically, extra attention should be devoted to extrovert and pragmatic individuals in future research and interventions. People with these characteristics are more prone to consume news on social media and at greater risk of falling prey to misinformation and becoming a driving force for misinformation distribution. Peer review -The peer review history for this article is available at:https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-10-2021-0520
ABSTRACT
Purpose - This study has three main purposes: (1) to investigate the association between social media news use and misperceptions about COVID-19;(2) to explore the mediating role of homogeneous online discussion;(3) and to understand whether the extent to which one perceives themselves as media-literate could moderate the relationship. Design/methodology/approach - The authors conducted an online survey and collected data through Amazon Mechanical Turk. A total of 797 participants aged 18 and above completed the survey. The average age of the respondents is 38.40 years (SD = 12.31), and 41.2% were female. In terms of party identification, 30.8% were reported leaning toward Republicans;53.7% leaned toward Democrats, and 15.4% were reported neutral. Findings - Results from a moderated mediation model show that social media news use is positively associated with misperceptions about the COVID-19. Moreover, homogeneous online discussion was a significant mediator of the relationship between social media news use and misperceptions about COVID-19. Further, self-perceived media literacy (SPML) significantly moderated the main and indirect effects between social media news use and COVID-19 misperceptions, such that the associations became weaker among those with higher SPML. Originality/value - Findings provide insights into the significance of online information sources, discussion network heterogeneity and media literacy education. Although there have been many studies on misinformation, prior research has not examined these relationships, which may help provide solutions to cope with misinformation.