The intrinsic and extrinsic factors predicting fake news sharing among social media users: the moderating role of fake news awareness

Research on fake news is growing, yet the relative influence of different factors on fake news sharing and how it can be reduced are still understudied. To fill this gap, this study treats user motivation and online environment as intrinsic and extrinsic factors and examines the role of fake news awareness as a prevention against the spread of fake news. This study describes the results of a Malaysian sample (N = 451) to determine the effects of intrinsic factor (altruism, information sharing, socialization and status seeking) and extrinsic factor (trust in network, homophily, norm of reciprocity and tie strength) on fake news sharing using Partial Least Square (PLS). Unlike past research, we treated the two main factors as higher order-constructs. Our findings revealed a stronger appeal of online environment than user motivation in determining fake news sharing among social media users in Malaysia. We also found that high fake news awareness determined low fake news sharing. This result suggests the importance of fake news awareness as an intervention strategy to curtail the spread of fake news. Future research is needed to build upon our findings to be tested at cross-cultural settings and also employ time series analysis to better understand the effect of increasing awareness of fake news over time.