Factors that motivate South African students to share fake news on social media platforms

Dissertation (MIT (Information Systems) )--University of Pretoria, 2021.The increased adoption of social media and the continued spread of fake news has resulted in unique problems for society to overcome in the modern era. This study aims to determine what factors influence South African students to share fake news on social media platforms. The theory that was used to create the research model and questionnaire was the Users and Gratification (U&G) framework. A mixed-method approach was followed in conducting the study, utilising both quantitative and qualitative strategies. Data was gathered through collecting responses using a questionnaire distributed to students of the EBIT faculty at the University of Pretoria. 190 usable responses were gathered. The questionnaire was created using Google forms and the questionnaire link was shared to students through clickUP and various student groups on Facebook. The factors that were investigated were platform, emotional drivers, social responsibility, conformity, biases, trust, third-person perspective (TPP) and personality and how they influence intention to share fake news among students. The findings from the empirical study of 190 students found that the hypothesis that there is a positive association between bias and trust was partially supported. There was also found to be a negative correlation between third-person perspective, emotional drivers, and the conscientiousness trait of the big-five personality model. This confirms that people’s emotional drive, bias, TPP, trust, and conscientiousness have a moderate effect on their intention to share. Additionally, from the qualitative findings, the factors of previous experience and knowledge were also found to influence intention to share. Through partial least squares regression analysis, we found that the factors that contributed the most to intention to share are emotional influences and the conscientiousness trait of personality that both had a negative association. TPP has small correlations to intention to share. Trust and bias were removed from the quantitative model due to bad fit, however, from the qualitative findings it was determined that trust and bias impacted students’ identification of fake news articles. By understanding the relationship between TPP, conscientiousness, trust, bias, emotional drivers, previous experience, previous knowledge and intention to share fake news may help further the understanding of why fake news is spread, the motivation for students to share fake news and curb the spread with changing technological environments. These findings can also promote action to implement programs and regulations to protect users who are vulnerable and more exposed to fake news on social media platforms.InformaticsMIT (Information Systems)Unrestricte