•Previous research show significant gender differences and gaps with regards to news consumption.

•They also show that the two genders can have different motivations for using social media and that their consumption motivation can be explained through behavioural patterns of socialization.

•Scholars have made a distinction between misinformation, disinformation and mal-information to emphasize the complexity of the false information phenomenon, but in this study, the authors use fake news and misinformation interchangeably, because for common people, fake news encompasses many forms of misinformation.

•The authors of the article seek to explore if previous results would be projected on gender based fake news research.