Attention and misinformation sharing on social media

TL;DR

This paper investigates how users' attention influences their likelihood of sharing misinformation on social media, highlighting the importance of attention factors in reducing misinformation spread.

Contribution

It identifies significant attention-related factors affecting misinformation sharing and proposes incorporating these factors into social media design to mitigate misinformation spread.

Findings

Attention factors negatively correlate with misinformation sharing

Regression analysis shows significant impact of attention on sharing behavior

Designing social media with attention cues can reduce misinformation spread

Abstract

The behaviour of sharing information on social media should be fulfilled only when a user is exhibiting attentive behaviour. So that the useful information can be consumed constructively, and misinformation can be identified and ignored. Attentive behaviour is related to users' cognitive abilities in their processing of set information. The work described in this paper examines the issue of attentive factors that affect users' behaviour when they share misinformation on social media. The research aims to identify the significance of prevailing attention factors towards sharing misinformation on social media. We used a closed-ended questionnaire which consisted of a psychometric scale to measure attention behaviour with participants (n = 112). The regression equation results are obtained as: y=(19,533-0,390+e) from a set of regression analyses shows that attention factors have a significant negative correlation effect for users to share misinformation on social media. Along with the findings of the analysis results, we propose that attentive factors are incorporated into a social media application's future design that could intervene in user attention and avoid potential harm caused by the spread of misinformation.