Urgent threatening messages, group pressure, and shallow assessment drive fake-news sharing.

Evidence

We also asked people if they’d ever, knowingly, shared ‘fake news’ on WhatsApp. When we looked at the factors that were most predictive of people’s self-reported sharing of fake news, three stood out: being exposed to urgent messages that contain threatening or harmful information; pretending to agree with a message because of group pressure; and not fully assessing the content of the messages before sharing them. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 325

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Explicit social coercion embedded in messages overrides accuracy motivations. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 353; False news reached more people than truth on Twitter, driven by human sharing. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 346; Unchallenged assertions gain credibility with passive audiences — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice: How to Communicate…, 263 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Pre-exposing people to weakened persuasive attacks cultivates mental resistance against later misinformation. #contradicts (0.85) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 633
• Unchallenged assertions gain credibility with passive audiences #qualifies (0.75) — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 263