“Click without clicks” are more common in extreme and conservative publications. Investigators recommend notices that encourage users to read the articles before they share them.
A new study reveals that 75% of Facebook users share news links without reading your content.
After analyzing 35 million publications On Facebook between 2017 and 2020, researchers from the University of Florida led by Professor Jinping Wang found that “shares without clicks” dominate sharing activity, with more than 42 billion of this type to represent three quarters of all shared content , according to the study in Nature Human Behaviour.
Furthermore, politically extreme publications were significantly greater probability of being shared without being readcompared to the moderates.
The study also revealed important differences in sharing habits throughout the political spectrum. Users Conservatives presented higher rates of fake information sharing (76.9%) than liberals (14.3%). This disparity was largely attributed to the source material, with 76 to 82% of false URLs from conservative news agencies.
Researchers have observed that these sharing patterns often result from the superficial processing of titles and articles, which overlaps the actual content of the article.
“The virality of political content on social networks seems to be driven by a superficial processing of titles and articles, rather than a systematic processing of the main content,” the researchers write in.
Users analyzed were also more likely to share unqualified stories that aligned with their existing beliefs, contributing to “ideological segregation” online.
Os Investigators recommend changes In platform interfaces, such as warnings that encourage users to read articles before sharing them and warning standards.
