The Effects of Social Norms and Platform Design on Online Misinformation Sharing

• In Event: The Diffusion of Misinformation

Abstract

Almost 62 percent of the total global population uses at least one social media platform (Kepios 2023). Social media continue to be of growing importance, especially to younger individuals. Therefore, understanding social dynamics of information sharing on social media is of utmost importance. It has been suggested that individuals experience social pressure to (re)share information posted by close friends and family on social media platforms, regardless of the veracity of that information (Lawson et al. 2023). The role of norms in creating this social pressure and the potential to use an accuracy norm to mitigate this pressure, however, has been underexplored by researchers. Further, the interaction between norm pressures and the functionality of different social media platforms (e.g., whether activity is public or can be restricted) is poorly understood. We provide a theoretical framework to think about how the functionality of different platforms affects norm-driven behaviours, considering the growing heterogeneity of platforms. Then, using a large, online, 5-country survey, we measure the norm to share information from close friends and family, and experimentally test the role of this norm in the sharing of misinformation. We also measure the norm to share only accurate information, and experimentally test if priming this norm mitigates the sharing of misinformation. In doing so, we test the effect of different norms on an individual's vulnerability and resilience to the sharing of misinformation online. Finally, we discuss the implications of these results for our understanding of how platform functionality increases vulnerability and resilience.

Authors

• Mark A. Pickup, Simon Fraser University

• Dominik Andrzej Stecula, The Ohio State University

• Clifton van der Linden, McMaster University