Targeting audiences' moral values shapes misinformation sharing

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Computational Social Science
• Communication Studies

Background:

• Misinformation frequently spreads on social media platforms.
• Understanding the psychological drivers of misinformation sharing is crucial for developing effective interventions.
• Previous research has explored factors like cognitive biases and political ideology, but the role of moral values remains underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether aligning misinformation content with individuals' core moral values facilitates its spread.
• To examine the impact of moral value alignment on sharing intentions for both true and false news.
• To analyze the role of moral framing and sender ideology in the dissemination of COVID-19 vaccination misinformation on Twitter.

Main Methods:

• Three behavioral experiments were conducted to assess sharing intentions based on moral alignment and analytical thinking.
• Natural language processing (NLP) was employed to analyze the moral framing and political ideology of real-world Twitter data.
• A large dataset of COVID-19 vaccination misinformation tweets was analyzed to explore real-world dissemination patterns.

Main Results:

• Framing content to align with audience moral values significantly increased sharing intentions for both true and false headlines.
• Moral alignment facilitated the sharing of misinformation more than true information, independent of headline familiarity and political ideology.
• Analysis of Twitter data revealed that alignment between message moral framing and sender ideology promoted misinformation spread, driven by motivational factors.

Conclusions:

• Targeting core values can effectively influence the dissemination of information and misinformation on social media.
• Partisan divides in misinformation sharing can be partly explained by the alignment between audience moral values and online content's moral framing.
• The findings highlight the importance of motivational factors in the spread of misinformation and suggest avenues for mitigation strategies.