From whispers to warriors: Public atmosphere’s role in mobilizing social media users against rumors

Abstract

Governments and social media platforms strive to combat the spread of online rumors by fostering a positive public atmosphere of rumor combating. However, the effectiveness of this approach remains uncertain, as do the underlying mechanisms through which public atmosphere mobilizes social media users against rumors. Leveraging insights from psychological attachment theory and ethics research, this study aims to examine the mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions for the relationship between public atmosphere and rumor-combating participation (RCP). This empirical study employed a hypothetical scenario method to design two scenarios (i.e., strong vs. weak public atmosphere of rumor combating), and collected 331 valid responses using the MTurk platform. The results provide empirical evidence that public atmosphere significantly facilitates RCP. Moreover, high-level psychological attachment (i.e., identification and internalization) fully mediates the relationship between public atmosphere and RCP, but low-level psychological attachment (i.e., compliance) does not act as a mediator. Further examination of the boundary conditions revealed that moral judgment positively moderates the relationship between public atmosphere and psychological attachment (both high-level and low-level). However, anticipated guilt only exerts a positive moderating influence on the relationship between public atmosphere and low-level psychological attachment. This study provides fresh insights by revealing that public atmosphere can promote RCP by enhancing high-level psychological attachment, while uncovering the distinct moderating roles played by moral cognition and emotion in the process. Therefore, this paper not only advances our theoretical understanding of why and under what conditions public atmosphere influences RCP, but also offers practical insights into strategies for mobilizing social media users to combat rumors.