Supplementary information for The amplification of exaggerated and false news on social media: the roles of platform use, motivations, affect, and ideology

Supplementary information files for article  
The amplification of exaggerated and false news on social media: the roles of platform use, motivations, affect, and ideology

 We use a unique, nationally representative, survey of UK social media users (n = 2,005) to identify the main factors associated with a specific and particularly troubling form of sharing behavior: the amplification of exaggerated and false news. Our conceptual framework and research design advance research in two ways. First, we pinpoint and measure behavior that is intended to spread, rather than correct or merely draw attention to, misleading information. Second, we test this behavior’s links to a wider array of explanatory factors than previously considered in research on mis-/disinformation. Our main findings are that a substantial minority—a tenth—of UK social media users regularly engages in the amplification of exaggerated or false news on UK social media. This behavior is associated with four distinctive, individual-level, factors: (1) increased use of Instagram, but not other public social media platforms, for political news; (2) what we term identity-performative sharing motivations; (3) negative affective orientation toward social media as a space for political news; and (4) right wing ideology. We discuss the implications of these findings and the need for further research on how platform affordances and norms, emotions, and ideology matter for the diffusion of dis-/misinformation.

本篇论文的补充信息文件探讨了社交媒体上夸张与虚假新闻的放大现象：平台使用、动机、情感倾向与意识形态的作用。本研究利用一项独特且具有全国代表性的英国社交媒体用户调查（样本量n=2,005），旨在识别与一种特别令人担忧的分享行为相关的主要因素：即在英国社交媒体上放大夸张或虚假新闻。本研究在概念框架和研究设计上推动了两个方面的研究进展。首先，我们明确了旨在传播而非纠正或仅仅引起注意的误导性信息的具体行为，并对其进行了测量。其次，我们测试了这种行为与之前在虚假信息/错误信息研究中所考虑的更广泛的解释因素之间的联系。我们的主要发现是，英国社交媒体用户中有相当一部分——十分之一——定期参与在英国社交媒体上放大夸张或虚假新闻的行为。这种行为与四个独特的、个体层面的因素相关：（1）增加使用Instagram以获取政治新闻，但并非其他公共社交媒体平台；（2）我们称之为身份表现型分享动机；（3）对社交媒体作为政治新闻空间的负面情感倾向；（4）右翼意识形态。我们讨论了这些发现的意义以及对进一步研究平台功能与规范、情感和意识形态如何影响虚假信息/错误信息传播的必要性的看法。