The Habitual Sharer: How Social Media Design Fuels the Spread of Fake News
A groundbreaking study from the University of Southern California (USC) has identified a major culprit in the proliferation of misinformation online: the very structure of social media platforms. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research reveals that the reward systems ingrained in these platforms cultivate habitual sharing behaviors, inadvertently turning users into unwitting agents of fake news dissemination. Contrary to popular belief, the issue lies less with users’ critical thinking abilities or political biases, and more with the platforms’ inherent design that prioritizes engagement above all else.
The USC team, comprised of researchers from the Marshall School of Business and the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, found that a small minority of highly active users – just 15% – are responsible for spreading a staggering 30% to 40% of fake news. These individuals, dubbed "habitual sharers," engage in a cycle of posting and sharing driven by the platforms’ reward mechanisms. Like video games, social media platforms employ systems that incentivize users to remain active, rewarding frequent posting and sharing, particularly of sensational or attention-grabbing content. This creates a feedback loop where users become conditioned to share information without fully considering its veracity.
The study highlights how these platforms inadvertently train users to prioritize engagement over accuracy. "Due to the reward-based learning systems on social media, users form habits of sharing information that gets recognition from others," the researchers explain. Once these habits are established, information sharing becomes an automatic response to platform cues, bypassing critical evaluation of the content being shared. This automated process allows misinformation to slip through the cracks, often without the user’s conscious awareness. The act of posting, sharing, and engaging online transforms into a habit, driven by the pursuit of virtual rewards and recognition.
Lead researcher Gizem Ceylan, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Yale School of Management, emphasizes the significance of these findings. While acknowledging the role of individual factors like cognitive biases and political beliefs in the spread of misinformation, Ceylan points to the overarching influence of platform design. “We show that the reward structure of social media platforms plays a bigger role when it comes to misinformation spread.” Wendy Wood, a USC expert on habits and emerita Provost Professor of psychology and business, concurs, stating, “Our findings show that misinformation isn’t spread through a deficit of users. It’s really a function of the structure of the social media sites themselves.”
To investigate this phenomenon, the researchers conducted a series of experiments involving 2,476 active Facebook users. The study design involved a "decision-making" survey, revealing that users’ social media habits doubled or even tripled the amount of fake news they shared, outweighing other factors like political beliefs and critical reasoning skills. Habitual users were particularly prolific, sharing six times more fake news than occasional or new users. This behavior is reinforced by algorithms that prioritize engagement when determining what content users see, creating an environment where sensationalized – and often false – information thrives.
The study also explored the nature of this habitual sharing. One experiment demonstrated that habitual users share both true and false news indiscriminately, suggesting a broader pattern of insensitivity to content accuracy. Another experiment confirmed this, finding that habitual users shared politically discordant news – information challenging their own beliefs – as readily as concordant news. This underscores the automated nature of habitual sharing, where content evaluation takes a back seat to the ingrained habit of sharing itself. Finally, the researchers investigated whether alternative reward structures could mitigate the spread of misinformation. By incentivizing accuracy over popularity, they successfully doubled the amount of accurate news shared, demonstrating the potential for platform design changes to curb the spread of fake news.
The study’s conclusions offer a roadmap for tackling the misinformation crisis: habitual sharing is not inevitable, users can be encouraged to develop habits that prioritize truthfulness, and restructuring online environments is crucial to effectively combating misinformation. By shifting the focus from content moderation to a fundamental redesign of reward systems, social media platforms can play a proactive role in curbing the spread of fake news and fostering a more informed online ecosystem. The research underscores the responsibility of these platforms to address the unintended consequences of their design and to prioritize the accuracy of information shared over mere user engagement.