Employing face reading technology to study the effects of the fake news' message sidedness on consumers' emotional valence and arousal

Purpose This study aims to investigate how message sidedness affects the impact of fake news posted on social media on consumers' emotional responses. Design/methodology/approach The study involves a face-tracking experiment in which 198 participants were exposed to different fake news messages concerning the COVID-19 vaccine. Specifically, participants were exposed to fake news using (1) a one-sided negative fake news message in which the message was entirely unfavorable and (2) a two-sided fake news message in which the negative message was mixed with favorable information. Noldus FaceReader 7, an automatic facial expression recognition system, was used to recognize participants' emotions as they read fake news. The authors sampled 17,450 observations of participants' emotional responses. Findings The results provide evidence of the significant influence of message sidedness on consumers' emotional valence and arousal. Specifically, two-sided fake news positively influences emotional valence, while one-sided fake news positively influences emotional arousal. Originality/value The current study demonstrates that research on fake news posted on social media may particularly benefit from insights regarding the potential but often overlooked importance of strategic design choices in fake news messages and their impact on consumers' emotional responses.