The confusion-based account of social media misinformation sharing proposes that people share misinformation because they accidentally believe that the misinformation is accurate.

Confusion-Based Account of Social Media Misinformation Sharing

The preference-based account of social media misinformation sharing proposes that people knowingly share misinformation because they care less about accuracy than other factors. 

Preference-Based Account of Social Media Misinformation Sharing

Misinformation can spread because people are distracted by information other than accuracy. Some of these could include: party alignment, social relevance, or social reinforcement. 

Inattention-Based Account of Misinformation

A survey quantifying the relative contribution of the confusion-based, preference-based and inattention-based accounts to the willingness to share false headlines on social media found that the inattention-based account explains 51.2% of sharing, the confusion-based account explains 33.1% of sharing, and the preference-based account explains 15.8% of sharing. 

Effect Size of each Theory of Social Media Misinformation Sharing

 - Confusion-based account
 - Inattention-based account
 - Preference-based account

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Many aspects of social media make it especially susceptible to the spread of misinformation. 
- Messages are easy to process, therefore easy to believe.
- Credibility is easily established by following friends, who often have similar views (which also establishes compatibility).
- Posts are shared by people you trust, establishes repetition and social consensus.
- Comments and related posts provide supporting evidence and familiarity.
- Users can gain a false sense of expertise, becoming very familiar with one perspective. 
- Lack of opposing ideas on a person’s feed is interpreted as a lack of different ideas overall.


The Susceptibility of Social Media to Misinformation

Pennycook, G., Epstein, Z., Mosleh, M., Arechar, A. A., Eckles, D., & Rand, D. G. (2021). Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online. Nature, 592(7855), 590–595. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03344-2

Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online

While the study lays the groundwork for a partial solution to the misinformation problem, it does have limitations. Therefore, further research must be done before real-world solutions could be confidently implemented. 
- The study only surveyed US residents. As a result, the results cannot be generalized to the global population. 
- The study only used headlines. Misinformation can spread through other ways, like emails, texts, and other online posts. 
- The study's context does not reflect the true social media environment. In one's news feed, news articles are interspersed with content that does not require attention to accuracy, like animal pictures or baby announcements. This may cause people to peruse social media with little attention to accuracy by default. 

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