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Abstract
Recently the spread of fake news has become a serious concern. However, there is limited research examining the factors that can help contain the spread of fake news on social media. This research uses the lens of mindfulness and a cluster of theories related to social media engagement (information processing, the network of strong ties, homophily, polarization, and echo chamber effects) to explain how social media networks become homophilic and polarized over time. The study shows that mindfulness can combat confirmation biases caused by cognitive limitations and the polarizing nature of online social media networks. We used eight fake scenarios to examine how a friend's influence could lead to polarization (i.e., the unification of views) and how mindfulness can abet such coalescing of attitudes, thus limiting the spread of fake news. The study also presents a new social mindfulness construct along with a scale, and empirically shows it to be a second-order construct with five first-order dimensions.
Recommended Citation
Bansal, Gaurav and Weinschenk, Aaron, "Something Real about Fake News: The Role of Polarization and Mindfulness" (2020). AMCIS 2020 Proceedings. 8.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2020/social_computing/social_computing/8
Something Real about Fake News: The Role of Polarization and Mindfulness
Recently the spread of fake news has become a serious concern. However, there is limited research examining the factors that can help contain the spread of fake news on social media. This research uses the lens of mindfulness and a cluster of theories related to social media engagement (information processing, the network of strong ties, homophily, polarization, and echo chamber effects) to explain how social media networks become homophilic and polarized over time. The study shows that mindfulness can combat confirmation biases caused by cognitive limitations and the polarizing nature of online social media networks. We used eight fake scenarios to examine how a friend's influence could lead to polarization (i.e., the unification of views) and how mindfulness can abet such coalescing of attitudes, thus limiting the spread of fake news. The study also presents a new social mindfulness construct along with a scale, and empirically shows it to be a second-order construct with five first-order dimensions.
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