First-of-its-kind MSU study links problematic social media use to belief in fake news
Researchers at Michigan State University believe their study is the first to look at how problematic social media use is involved with people’s trust in ‘fake news’ by measuring their intended actions, like clicking, liking and sharing posts.
MSU Today
A first-of-its-kind study from researchers at Michigan State University reveals that individuals who experience the most distress and impairment in daily functioning from social media use are more likely to believe fake news.
“Social media are everywhere in our daily lives, and some people display problematic, excessive use of these platforms. We found that this overuse is associated with a greater tendency to believe in and engage with misinformation,” said Dar Meshi, an associate professor and co-author of the study, which recently published in the journal PLOS One and was funded by MSU’s Trifecta Initiative.
Meshi and his co-author, Maria D. Molina, both faculty members in the MSU College of Communication Arts and Sciences, conducted an online experiment in which 189 participants, age 18 to 26, were presented with 20 news stories formatted as social media posts. Ten of the stories were real and ten were false, and the order of delivery was randomized.
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