Reading Beyond Headline Rare For Most on Social Media, Study Finds

Follow Drugslib on

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on Nov 22, 2024.

By Carole Tanzer Miller HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, Nov. 22, 2024 -- Three out of four times, your Facebook friends don't read past the headline when they share a link to political content.

Experts say that's somewhat surprising -- and downright scary.

People who share without clicking may be unwittingly aiding hostile adversaries aiming to sow seeds of division and distrust, warned S. Shyam Sundar, a professor of media effects at Penn State University.

"Superficial processing of headlines and blurbs can be dangerous if false data are being shared and not investigated," said Sundar, corresponding author of the new study published Nov. 19 in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

"Disinformation or misinformation campaigns aim to sow the seeds of doubt or dissent in a democracy -- the scope of these efforts came to light in the 2016 and 2020 elections," he added in a Penn State news release.

To learn more about content shared on social media, his team analyzed more than 35 million public posts containing links shared on Facebook between 2017 and 2020. The links included political content from both ends of the spectrum — and it was shared without clicking more often than politically neutral content.

While the study was limited to Facebook, researchers said their findings likely apply to other social media platforms as well.

Data for the analysis were provided in collaboration with Facebook's parent company, Meta.

It included user demographics and behaviors, including a "political page affinity score." This was determined by identifying pages that users follow.

Users fell into one of five groups — very liberal, liberal, neutral, conservative and very conservative.

Researchers then used AI to find and classify political terms in linked content, scoring content on that same scale, based on number of shares from each affinity group.

One by one, researchers manually sorted 8,000 links, identifying content as political or non-political. That data trained an algorithm that analyzed 35 million links that were shared more than 100 times by Facebook users in the United States.

From that analysis, a pattern emerged that held true at the individual level.

"The closer the political alignment of the content to the user -- both liberal and conservative -- the more it was shared without clicks," said study co-author Eugene Cho Snyder, an assistant professor of humanities and social sciences at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. "They are simply forwarding things that seem on the surface to agree with their political ideology, not realizing that they may sometimes be sharing false information."

Meta also provided data from a third-party fact-checking service, which flagged more than 2,900 links to false content.

In all, these links were shared more than 41 million times -- without being clicked, according to the study.

Of these, 77% came from conservative users and 14% from liberal users. Up to 82% of links to false information came from conservative news domains, researchers found.

Sundar said social media platforms could take steps to curb sharing without clicking -- for example, users could be required to acknowledge that they have read the content in full before sharing.

"If platforms implement a warning that the content might be false and make users acknowledge the dangers in doing so, that might help people thing before sharing," Sundar said.

It wouldn't, however, stop intentional disinformation campaigns, he added.

"The reason this happens may be because people are just bombarded with information and are not stopping to think it through," Sundar said. "Hopefully, people will learn from our study and become more media literate, digitally savvy and, ultimately, more aware of what they are sharing."

Sources

  • Penn State, news release, Nov. 20, 2024

    • Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

    Source: HealthDay

    Posted : 2024-11-23 06:00

    Read more

    Disclaimer

    Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided by Drugslib.com is accurate, up-to-date, and complete, but no guarantee is made to that effect. Drug information contained herein may be time sensitive. Drugslib.com information has been compiled for use by healthcare practitioners and consumers in the United States and therefore Drugslib.com does not warrant that uses outside of the United States are appropriate, unless specifically indicated otherwise. Drugslib.com's drug information does not endorse drugs, diagnose patients or recommend therapy. Drugslib.com's drug information is an informational resource designed to assist licensed healthcare practitioners in caring for their patients and/or to serve consumers viewing this service as a supplement to, and not a substitute for, the expertise, skill, knowledge and judgment of healthcare practitioners.

    The absence of a warning for a given drug or drug combination in no way should be construed to indicate that the drug or drug combination is safe, effective or appropriate for any given patient. Drugslib.com does not assume any responsibility for any aspect of healthcare administered with the aid of information Drugslib.com provides. The information contained herein is not intended to cover all possible uses, directions, precautions, warnings, drug interactions, allergic reactions, or adverse effects. If you have questions about the drugs you are taking, check with your doctor, nurse or pharmacist.

    Popular Keywords