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PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the impacts of rumors' information characteristics on people's believing and spreading of rumors online.Design/methodology/approachThis study employed a mixed-methods approach by combining qualitative and quantitative methods. In study 1, the authors explored different types of rumors and their information source characteristics through qualitative research. In study 2, the authors utilized the findings from study 1 to develop an empirical model to verify the impact of these characteristics on the public's behaviors of believing and spreading rumors by content analysis and quantitative research.FindingsThe results show that five information source characteristics – credibility, professionalism, attractiveness, mystery and concreteness – influence the spreading effect of different types of rumors.Research limitations/implicationsThis study contributes to rumor spreading research by deepening the theory of information source characteristics and adding to the emerging literature on the COVID-19 pandemic.Practical implicationsInsights from this research offer important practical implications for policymakers and online-platform operators by highlighting how to suppress the spread of rumors, particularly those associated with COVID-19.Originality/valueThis research introduces the theory of information source characteristics into the field of rumor spreading and adopts a mixed-methods approach, taking COVID-19 rumors as a typical case, which provides a unique perspective for a deeper understanding of rumor spreading's antecedences.

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