Fake news land? Exploring the impact of social media affordances on user behavioral responses: A mixed-methods research

Social media platforms have empowered the rampant dissemination of fake news and serve as a “hotspot” for fake news. While existing research has recognized the causal motivations of users in fake news dissemination, however, research has largely overlooked the role of platforms in shaping user behavioral responses. Therefore, working from an affordance lens and grounded in feeling-as-information theory, this study constructed a moderated serial-mediation model to understand the impacts of social media affordances on user behavioral responses toward fake news, the serial mediating role of autonomy, skepticism self-efficacy, self-indulgence, and the moderating role of perceived ambiguity. Through a mixed-methods approach, this study identifies the main constructs of social media affordances (i.e., anonymity, editability, visibility, and ephemerality) and multiple behavioral responses (i.e., fact-authenticating, counterarguing, and instant sharing) by a qualitative method via in-depth interviewing, and demonstrates the underlying mechanisms quantitatively via an online survey. The results reveal that social media affordances enhance user autonomy, which further leads to cognitive-affective consequences (i.e., skepticism self-efficacy and self-indulgence), impacting multiple behavioral responses. However, perceived ambiguity was found to be non-significant in moderating the primary effects. These findings shed light on the impact of social media affordances in fake news dissemination, providing novel insights into how social media platforms and policymakers can act as better gatekeepers in fake news.