Misinformation sharing and social media fatigue during COVID-19: An affordance and cognitive load perspective

A K M Najmul Islam; Samuli Laato; Shamim Talukder; Erkki Sutinen

doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2020.120201

Misinformation sharing and social media fatigue during COVID-19: An affordance and cognitive load perspective

Technol Forecast Soc Change. 2020 Oct:159:120201. doi: 10.1016/j.techfore.2020.120201. Epub 2020 Jul 12.

Authors

A K M Najmul Islam^{1

2}, Samuli Laato², Shamim Talukder³, Erkki Sutinen²

Affiliations

¹ LUT School of Engineering Science, LUT University, Finland.
² Department of Future Technologies, University of Turku, Finland.
³ Department of Management, North South University, Bangladesh.

Abstract

Social media plays a significant role during pandemics such as COVID-19, as it enables people to share news as well as personal experiences and viewpoints with one another in real-time, globally. Building off the affordance lens and cognitive load theory, we investigate how motivational factors and personal attributes influence social media fatigue and the sharing of unverified information during the COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, we develop a model which we analyse using the structural equation modelling and neural network techniques with data collected from young adults in Bangladesh (N = 433). The results show that people, who are driven by self-promotion and entertainment, and those suffering from deficient self-regulation, are more likely to share unverified information. Exploration and religiosity correlated negatively with the sharing of unverified information. However, exploration also increased social media fatigue. Our findings indicate that the different use purposes of social media introduce problematic consequences, in particular, increased misinformation sharing.

Keywords: COVID-19; Fake news; Fatigue; Misinformation; Pandemic; Social media.