Who Shares Fake News Intentionally and Unintentionally
on Social Media?
The Case of Facebook Users in Poland
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Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin
Submission date: 2023-11-11
Acceptance date: 2024-04-02
Publication date: 2024-06-10
Polish Sociological Review 2024;226(2):169-188
KEYWORDS
ABSTRACT
By exploring users’ engagement in communication and their social media literacy (SML), this study
examines who shares fake news on Facebook intentionally and unintentionally. A two-phase online survey has
been conducted among 1,000 active Facebook users in Poland. We found that users engaged in communication
on multiple social media platforms tend to share fake news intentionally. There is a negative relationship between
SML score and intentional sharing. However, those with higher functional consumption scores (the dimension
of SML) tend to share fake news intentionally. Men are less likely to share fake news unintentionally. The crosstabulation
of classes and variables related to social media use revealed that users with lower level of salary,
education and occupational status are most likely to share fake news both intentionally and unintentionally.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors thank the DARIAH-LAB Infrastructure (POIR.04.02.00-00-D006/20) for access to computational resources, which allowed to conduct the research for the purposes of this article.