When We Think “News Will Find Me”: Relative Credibility of Social-Media Friends, Algorithms, and Editors

IF 4.9 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Social Media + Society Pub Date : 2026-04-03 DOI:10.1177/20563051261434801

Mengqi Liao, Yuan Sun, Timilehin Durotoye, Homero Gil de Zúñiga, S. Shyam Sundar

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Many individuals do not seek news, believing instead that “news will find me” (NFM), implying that they trust their social networks to keep them informed, saving them the trouble of proactively seeking news from journalistic outlets. Does this mean that they trust social media algorithms to accurately filter and recommend content that is relevant to them? Do they trust their friends to keep them informed, just like they would journalists? To answer these questions, we conducted a pre-registered between-subjects experiment ( N = 244) in which users with varying levels of NFM were randomly assigned to receive news recommended by either their social media friends, news editors, or an algorithm. We discovered that while users tend to act on news recommended by an algorithm mindlessly before reading it first, the type of cognitive heuristic triggered by a news source plays an important role in shaping their trust. Specifically, individuals high on NFM tend to trust algorithms because they trigger the “machine heuristic.” They also consider social media friends and algorithms to be as authoritative as news journalists and editors (“authority heuristic”). Our results advance theoretical knowledge about why high levels of NFM predict higher trust in social media friends and algorithms.

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当我们认为“新闻会找到我”：社交媒体朋友、算法和编辑的相对可信度

许多人并不寻找新闻，而是相信“新闻会找到我”（NFM），这意味着他们相信自己的社交网络会让他们获得消息，从而省去了从新闻媒体主动寻找新闻的麻烦。这是否意味着他们相信社交媒体算法能够准确地过滤和推荐与他们相关的内容？他们会像信任记者一样，信任朋友让他们随时了解情况吗？为了回答这些问题，我们进行了一项预先注册的受试者间实验（N = 244），在实验中，不同NFM水平的用户被随机分配接收由他们的社交媒体朋友、新闻编辑或算法推荐的新闻。我们发现，虽然用户倾向于在阅读之前无意识地对算法推荐的新闻采取行动，但新闻来源引发的认知启发类型在塑造他们的信任方面起着重要作用。具体来说，NFM高的个人倾向于信任算法，因为它们触发了“机器启发式”。他们还认为社交媒体上的朋友和算法与新闻记者和编辑一样具有权威性（“权威启发式”）。我们的研究结果推进了关于为什么高水平的NFM预测对社交媒体朋友和算法的更高信任的理论知识。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Social Media + Society COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

9.20

自引率

3.80%

发文量

111

审稿时长

12 weeks

期刊介绍： Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. We publish interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, reaches out to the arts and natural sciences, and we endorse mixed methods and methodologies. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies. The editorial vision of Social Media + Society draws inspiration from research on social media to outline a field of study poised to reflexively grow as social technologies evolve. We foster the open access of sharing of research on the social properties of media, as they manifest themselves through the uses people make of networked platforms past and present, digital and non. The journal presents a collaborative, open, and shared space, dedicated exclusively to the study of social media and their implications for societies. It facilitates state-of-the-art research on cutting-edge trends and allows scholars to focus and track trends specific to this field of study.