Abstract
A field experiment examined social approval in the form of Twitter "Likes"on individuals' perceptions after retweeting a fictitious news story about a politician. The study incorporated research about feedback effects on self-perception online, partisan bias, and negativity principles. Participants read or retweeted a (verifiably false) news story via social media, and researchers appended systematic increments of Likes to the retweets. A baseline hypothesis test found no effect on perceptions due to retweeting versus simply reading a news story. Results supported a predicted three-way interaction effect between positive versus negative news story, political congruence with participants' political party identification, and the reception of 0-22 Likes on perceptions of the politician. More Likes magnified negative perceptions of politicians, from fictitious news, when news stories were negative and focused on politicians from one's opposite political party.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 661-674 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Journal of Communication |
| Volume | 72 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 1 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2022 The Author(s).
Keywords
- fake news
- identity shift
- Likes
- social approval
- social media
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Communication
- Language and Linguistics
- Linguistics and Language