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Information Behavior towards False Information and “Fake News” on Facebook

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Title
Information Behavior towards False Information and “Fake News” on Facebook
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14
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CC Attribution 3.0 Germany:
You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
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Production Year2021
Production PlaceRegensburg

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Abstract
In this paper, we present a survey study with 119 participants conducted in German, which investigates respondents’ Facebook behavior. In particular, the survey provides insight into how the individual factors gender, user type and trust in social media influence information behavior with respect to false information on Facebook. Our participants’ Facebook use is predominantly passive, the trust in social media is mediocre and most users claim to encounter false information on a weekly basis. If the truthfulness of information is verified it is mostly done by checking alternative sources and for the most part, users do not react actively to false information on Facebook. Of the different categories of Facebook users studied, more active and intensive users of Facebook (posters and heavy users) encounter false information the most. These users are the only user group to report posts with false information to Facebook or interact with the post. Participants with higher trust in social media tend to check the comments of a post to verify information.