Dysfunctional information sharing on WhatsApp and Facebook: The role of political talk, cross-cutting exposure and social corrections

Abstract

In this study, we investigate dysfunctional information sharing on WhatsApp and Facebook, focusing on two explanatory variables—frequency of political talk and cross-cutting exposure—and potential remedies, such as witnessing, experiencing, and performing social corrections. Results suggest that dysfunctional sharing is pervasive, with nearly a quarter reporting sharing misinformation on Facebook and WhatsApp, but social corrections also occur relatively frequently. Platform matters, with corrections being more likely to be experienced or expressed on WhatsApp than Facebook. Taken together, our results suggest that the intimate nature of WhatsApp communication has important consequences for the dynamics of misinformation sharing, particularly with regard to facilitating social corrections.

Digital Media Landscape in Brazil: Political (Mis)Information and Participation on Facebook and WhatsApp

“…We then used an OLS model to examine if perceived exposure to misinformation was associated sociodemographic factors and frequency of platform use. As perceptions of misinformation may be associated with one's preexisting political views (Rossini et al, 2020;Schulz et al, 2020), also included political ideology as a control. In this case, higher education levels predict higher perceived exposure to misinformation, as well as frequency of platform use.…”

“…In Brazil, scholars have investigated the use of social media by politicians and activists in several recent events, such as presidential elections (Recuero et al, 2021) and protests (Bastos et al, 2015;Mourão & Chen, 2020). Recently, there has been a shift to WhatsApp given its prominent role in the current political context (Resende et al, 2019;Rossini et al, 2020). In this study, we focus on how Brazilians use different platforms when it comes to expressing their political opinions.…”

Disinformation and the Structural Transformations of the Public Arena: Addressing the Actual Challenges to Democracy

“…For one, the few studies that have empirically tested the reach of disinformation consistently find this reach to be severely limited (Allen et al, 2020;Fletcher et al, 2018;Grinberg et al, 2019;Guess et al, 2019Guess et al, , 2020. This being said, it may become more difficult to correctly estimate the spread of disinformation once it moves from predominantly public forums into closed communication environments, such as encrypted messaging apps like Telegram or WhatsApp (Rossini et al, 2020).…”

“…Given that these findings pertain to the Presidential election campaign of 2016, we can safely assume the role of disinformation in the election of Donald Trump to be minimal. In addition, various studies show that users engage in "social correction" in online environments like Twitter or WhatsApp; that is, pointing out to others when they had shared misinformation (Micallef et al, 2020;Rossini et al, 2020). This indicates that people in digital communication environments are far from hapless victims of manipulation but find ways to socially verify information, if so inclined (Nyhan, 2020).…”

Tracking private WhatsApp discourse about COVID-19: A longitudinal infodemiology study in Singapore

“…While these examples highlight WhatsApp's key role in organizing efforts during a crisis, the ease of information-sharing means that WhatsApp has also been implicated in the spread of misinformation (Resende et al, 2019;Rossini et al, 2020). Notably, following the 2018 flood of Kerala, WhatsApp was the primary channel through which misinformation spread amongst citizens (Kumar et al, 2019).…”