{"title":"Willingness to share information on social media: a systematic literature review (2020-2024).","authors":"Yingying Cai, Syafila Kamarudin, Saiful Nujaimi","doi":"10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1567506","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>The rapid advancement of Web 2.0 technologies, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has fundamentally transformed information sharing behaviors on social media. This transformation necessitates a comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing information sharing willingness in the digital era.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>This study systematically reviews 66 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2020 and 2024, focusing on key research topics, theoretical frameworks, and methodologies used to examine information sharing willingness on social media. Following the PRISMA guidelines, articles were identified and analyzed using keyword matching, thematic categorization, and expert review.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Our findings reveal four core research themes: general information sharing, health-related information sharing, false information dissemination, and crisis information sharing. These themes are examined through three primary theoretical perspectives: motivational-driven theories, cognitive-processing theories, and social-relational theories. The study identifies key factors influencing information sharing willingness across motivational, cognitive, and social dimensions. Methodologically, survey-based studies dominate this field, with experimental designs providing supplementary insights.</p><p><strong>Discussion: </strong>This review contributes to the literature by providing a holistic synthesis of the current research landscape, identifying gaps in knowledge, and proposing potential directions for social media platform operators and policymakers to consider. Future research directions are proposed to address unresolved challenges and advance the theoretical and methodological understanding of information sharing behavior in the digital era.</p>","PeriodicalId":12525,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Psychology","volume":"16 ","pages":"1567506"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6000,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12174407/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Frontiers in Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1567506","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Introduction: The rapid advancement of Web 2.0 technologies, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has fundamentally transformed information sharing behaviors on social media. This transformation necessitates a comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing information sharing willingness in the digital era.
Methods: This study systematically reviews 66 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2020 and 2024, focusing on key research topics, theoretical frameworks, and methodologies used to examine information sharing willingness on social media. Following the PRISMA guidelines, articles were identified and analyzed using keyword matching, thematic categorization, and expert review.
Results: Our findings reveal four core research themes: general information sharing, health-related information sharing, false information dissemination, and crisis information sharing. These themes are examined through three primary theoretical perspectives: motivational-driven theories, cognitive-processing theories, and social-relational theories. The study identifies key factors influencing information sharing willingness across motivational, cognitive, and social dimensions. Methodologically, survey-based studies dominate this field, with experimental designs providing supplementary insights.
Discussion: This review contributes to the literature by providing a holistic synthesis of the current research landscape, identifying gaps in knowledge, and proposing potential directions for social media platform operators and policymakers to consider. Future research directions are proposed to address unresolved challenges and advance the theoretical and methodological understanding of information sharing behavior in the digital era.
期刊介绍:
Frontiers in Psychology is the largest journal in its field, publishing rigorously peer-reviewed research across the psychological sciences, from clinical research to cognitive science, from perception to consciousness, from imaging studies to human factors, and from animal cognition to social psychology. Field Chief Editor Axel Cleeremans at the Free University of Brussels is supported by an outstanding Editorial Board of international researchers. This multidisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and communicating scientific knowledge and impactful discoveries to researchers, academics, clinicians and the public worldwide. The journal publishes the best research across the entire field of psychology. Today, psychological science is becoming increasingly important at all levels of society, from the treatment of clinical disorders to our basic understanding of how the mind works. It is highly interdisciplinary, borrowing questions from philosophy, methods from neuroscience and insights from clinical practice - all in the goal of furthering our grasp of human nature and society, as well as our ability to develop new intervention methods.