The effect of social approval on perceptions following social media message sharing applied to fake news

Abstract

A field experiment examined social approval in the form of Twitter “Likes” on individuals’ perceptions after retweeting a fictitious news story about a politician. The study incorporated research about feedback effects on self-perception online, partisan bias, and negativity principles. Participants read or retweeted a (verifiably false) news story via social media, and researchers appended systematic increments of Likes to the retweets. A baseline hypothesis test found no effect on perceptions due to retweeting versus simply reading a news story. Results supported a predicted three-way interaction effect between positive versus negative news story, political congruence with participants’ political party identification, and the reception of 0–22 Likes on perceptions of the politician. More Likes magnified negative perceptions of politicians, from fictitious news, when news stories were negative and focused on politicians from one’s opposite political party.