Social Media News Credibility among Students in the Czech Republic

Abstract

With the development of the social network, a variety of misinformation, disinformation, and fake news has come to be often shared and spread. A clear link exists between this spread and the willingness of users to share news they receive. The reasons may differ-from actual belief in it to finding it humorous. Our article answers the following research questions: How much do students in the Czech Republic share news on social media? How much do they trust the news they read there? And does the attitude of students and older non-students differ? In the autumn of 2020, we conducted a survey at the Prague University of Economics and Business on the willingness to share news on social networks. The survey had 452 respondents, not all of which were students. Although the respondents, on the one hand, claimed they do not share messages they are not convinced are truthful, a sufficient number of likes or level of interestingness of the message often persuade them to do the opposite. We found that women are stricter about not sharing fake news than men. A further comparison between students and non-students demonstrated that students take social media as a source of news and recommend it more often, whereas non-students more often share specific messages.