Check the Report and Comments: The Veracity Assessment of Unfamiliar News on Social Media

Given growing concerns regarding the spread of medical misinformation, the current research set out to assess the message effects of social media news on reader veracity assessments. A 2 (news report with hedging vs. without hedging) by 3 (uncivil vs. civil vs. no comments) between-subject experiment on Facebook users was conducted (valid N = 824). Results reveal that news hedging was more predictive of perceived credibility, news sharing, and fact-checking tendencies than was comment incivility. Hedged reporting was also found to elevate perceived news credibility, which in turn predicted a greater likelihood of news sharing. Moreover, perceived credibility increased fact-checking tendency only when the news was reported with hedged messages. These findings indicate that when readers encounter an unfamiliar health news issue, the content of news played a more important role in veracity assessment than the style of reader comments.