Why people share misinformation on social media? An integration of affordance and flow theories

Abstract

The widespread dissemination of misinformation on social media calls for an empirical investigation of why people share such content. By integrating affordance theory and flow theory, this study examines the underlying psychological mechanisms between social media affordances and misinformation sharing. With 533 valid questionnaires, the findings demonstrate that social media affordances (information accessibility, metavoicing and association) are positively associated with cognitive involvement and affective involvement, which then exert positive effects on users’ misinformation sharing. The results further reveal that emotional ability negatively moderates the relationship between affective involvement and misinformation sharing. Theoretically, our empirical findings extend prior studies by complementing the positive connotation of social media affordances and demonstrating that social media affordances can drive misinformation sharing through the mechanism of flow. Practically, the findings imply that attention should be paid to the design and management of social media to curtail misinformation sharing.