Social Media and Trust in News: An Experimental Study of the Effect of Facebook on News Story Credibility
Social Media and Trust in News: An Experimental Study of the Effect of Facebook on News Story Credibility
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社交媒体与新闻信任：Facebook 对新闻报道可信度影响的实验研究
作者：
Rune Karlsen;T. Aalberg
人们越来越多地转向社交媒体来获取每日新闻更新。尽管如此，我们才刚刚开始了解这种发展如何影响人们对消费新闻故事的看法。这篇文章报道了一项实验，旨在调查社交媒体（Facebook）中新闻故事的传播对新闻消息可信度的影响。对照组被暴露在原始新闻网站上的新闻故事中，治疗组被暴露在Facebook上分享的相同新闻故事中。结果表明，通过Facebook的分布影响新闻故事的可信度。当政治家是中间人时，这种影响最强，并且在某种程度上取决于中间发送者和社交媒体受众的党派关系。在假新闻的背景下，结果令人放心：人们对他们通过社交媒体消费的新闻不那么信任。然而，研究结果也表明，社交媒体新闻分享可能会导致对新闻的信任度长期下降。
Abstract People increasingly turn to social media to get their daily news updates. Still, we are only beginning to understand how this development affects people’s perceptions of consumed news stories. The article reports on an experiment designed to investigate the effect the distribution of a news story in social media (Facebook) has on news message credibility. A control group was exposed to a news story on an original news website, and treatment groups were exposed to the same news story shared on Facebook. Results demonstrate that distribution via Facebook affects the credibility of the news story. The effect is strongest when politicians are intermediary-senders, and to some extent depend on the party affiliation of intermediary-sender and the social media audience. In the context of fake news, the results are reassuring: people are less trustful of news they consume through social media. However, the results also suggest that social media news sharing can contribute to the long-term decrease in trust in news.