Disinformation and Social Influence on Social Media: The Effects of Majority Opinion and Emotionality in Comments on Conformity

Sammanfattning

The purpose of this study was to investigate how people engage with disinformation on the social media platform Instagram, with the aim to understand the spread of false information online in the context of social influence. The study used an experimental method where participants were exposed to a fabricated news story along with different types of comment sections expressing either belief or disbelief in high or low emotionality, and then asked to write a comment of their own. A condition without comments served as the control. Deception was used by making participants believe that the news post was real, and that comments were written by other participants. The comments were coded based on belief and engagement. Results showed that the majority opinion expressed in the disbelief comments were a statistically significant predictor on participants' own responses, inducing scepticism. Belief comments did not produce a corresponding effect, and comment emotionality did not have an effect on either belief or engagement. An exploratory condition implementing a disclaimer was added post-hoc following the initial data collection. The disclaimer did not impact the participants' responses compared to the control. Conformity and social proof is proposed to be an explanation for the significant effect of disbelief comments, while Truth-Default Theory provides a potential explanation for the absence of significant effect in emotionality. Future research should further investigate different factors that affect users' perception of disinformation, and how disinformation could be inhibited with tools such as disclaimers.