I’ll Share It When I Believe It! An Experimental Study on the Effects of Hateful and False Content on Credibility and Sharing Intention

David Blanco-Herrero; Damian Trilling; Carlos Arcila-CalderÓn

I’ll Share It When I Believe It! An Experimental Study on the Effects of Hateful and False Content on Credibility and Sharing Intention

David Blanco-Herrero^*
, Damian Trilling
, Carlos Arcila-CalderÓn

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

The spread of false and hateful messages poses one of the greatest challenges in the current communication ecosystem. Although both phenomena have been widely analyzed, few studies have examined their combined effects. Using an experimental study with 404 Spanish citizens, we aim to understand the mechanism through which the credibility of false and hateful messages affects the intention to share them. We observed that the presence of falsehood and/or hatred seems to reduce the credibility of a message, which in turn has an indirect decreasing effect on the intention to share it, potentially informing future media literacy strategies to combat the spread of such messages by reducing citizens’ propensity to believe them. Interestingly, a higher education level does not seem to increase resilience against these toxic discourses.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	974-997
Number of pages	24
Journal	International Journal of Communication
Volume	19
Publication status	Published - 2025

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 (David Blanco-Herrero, Damian Trilling, and Carlos Arcila-Calderón). Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd). Available at http://ijoc.org.

Funding

David Blanco-Herrero: [email protected] Damian Trilling: [email protected] Carlos Arcila-Calderón: [email protected] Date submitted: 2023-10-12 1 This study was supported by an FPU Grant awarded to the first author (FPU19/01455) and funded by the Ministry of Universities of Spain, and the project “Desarrollo y evaluación de un prototipo de detección automática de noticias falsas online (FakeDetector)” (Ref: PC-TCUE21-23_003), funded by the Fundación General de la Universidad de Salamanca.

Funders	Funder number
Universidad de Salamanca
Ministerio de Universidades	PC-TCUE21-23_003

Keywords

anti-immigration discourses
credibility
disinformation
hate speech
shareworthiness

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https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/22301/4929Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

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Cite this

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title = "I{\textquoteright}ll Share It When I Believe It! An Experimental Study on the Effects of Hateful and False Content on Credibility and Sharing Intention",

abstract = "The spread of false and hateful messages poses one of the greatest challenges in the current communication ecosystem. Although both phenomena have been widely analyzed, few studies have examined their combined effects. Using an experimental study with 404 Spanish citizens, we aim to understand the mechanism through which the credibility of false and hateful messages affects the intention to share them. We observed that the presence of falsehood and/or hatred seems to reduce the credibility of a message, which in turn has an indirect decreasing effect on the intention to share it, potentially informing future media literacy strategies to combat the spread of such messages by reducing citizens{\textquoteright} propensity to believe them. Interestingly, a higher education level does not seem to increase resilience against these toxic discourses.",

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N2 - The spread of false and hateful messages poses one of the greatest challenges in the current communication ecosystem. Although both phenomena have been widely analyzed, few studies have examined their combined effects. Using an experimental study with 404 Spanish citizens, we aim to understand the mechanism through which the credibility of false and hateful messages affects the intention to share them. We observed that the presence of falsehood and/or hatred seems to reduce the credibility of a message, which in turn has an indirect decreasing effect on the intention to share it, potentially informing future media literacy strategies to combat the spread of such messages by reducing citizens’ propensity to believe them. Interestingly, a higher education level does not seem to increase resilience against these toxic discourses.

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KW - disinformation

KW - hate speech

KW - shareworthiness

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ER -

I’ll Share It When I Believe It! An Experimental Study on the Effects of Hateful and False Content on Credibility and Sharing Intention

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

Keywords

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