Omar Bahiyah, Apuke Oberiri Destiny, Nor Zarina Md
School of Communication, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, 11800 USM Malaysia.
Department of Mass Communication, Taraba State University, PMB 1167, Jalingo, Nigeria.
Curr Psychol. 2023 Feb 21:1-13. doi: 10.1007/s12144-023-04343-4.
Research on fake news is growing, yet the relative influence of different factors on fake news sharing and how it can be reduced are still understudied. To fill this gap, this study treats user motivation and online environment as intrinsic and extrinsic factors and examines the role of fake news awareness as a prevention against the spread of fake news. This study describes the results of a Malaysian sample (N = 451) to determine the effects of intrinsic factor () and extrinsic factor () on fake news sharing using Partial Least Square (PLS). Unlike past research, we treated the two main factors as higher order-constructs. Our findings revealed a stronger appeal of online environment than user motivation in determining fake news sharing among social media users in Malaysia. We also found that high fake news awareness determined low fake news sharing. This result suggests the importance of fake news awareness as an intervention strategy to curtail the spread of fake news. Future research is needed to build upon our findings to be tested at cross-cultural settings and also employ time series analysis to better understand the effect of increasing awareness of fake news over time.
关于假新闻的研究正在不断增加，但不同因素对假新闻传播的相对影响以及如何减少假新闻传播仍未得到充分研究。为了填补这一空白，本研究将用户动机和网络环境视为内在和外在因素，并考察假新闻意识作为防止假新闻传播的作用。本研究描述了一个马来西亚样本（N = 451）的结果，以使用偏最小二乘法（PLS）确定内在因素（）和外在因素（）对假新闻传播的影响。与以往的研究不同，我们将这两个主要因素视为高阶结构。我们的研究结果显示，在马来西亚社交媒体用户中，网络环境在决定假新闻传播方面比用户动机更具吸引力。我们还发现，高假新闻意识决定了低假新闻传播。这一结果表明，假新闻意识作为一种干预策略来减少假新闻传播的重要性。未来的研究需要在我们的研究结果基础上，在跨文化背景下进行测试，并采用时间序列分析，以更好地理解随着时间的推移假新闻意识提高的影响。
