Abstract
The increasingly assertive position of social media as a news source means that news audiences can no longer depend on traditional journalists for information verification. Instead, they must determine the news credibility on their own. The majority of information credibility studies have considered news audiences’ information evaluation as a purely cognitive endeavor, implying that individuals can arrive at valid information without social validation. By drawing on self-categorization theory, this article re-conceptualizes audiences’ acts of news authentication by considering it not as a one-off activity under the uncontested control of the individual, but as a cycle of collective authentication strategies whereby individual authentication and social validation are entangled in the context-dependent processing of social news. To do this, we unpacked the social dimension of news authentication by looking at the social motivation, strategies, as well as the consequences that support it through a series of focus group discussions in Singapore.
Keywords
Social media has grown to be a popular platform where people share news to help maintain group cohesion (Goh et al., 2017). Unfortunately, the very characteristics of news that make it worth sharing are also mimicked by fake news on social media. This makes social media a fertile ground for the spread of disinformation. The weakening of institutional gatekeeping for information production and dissemination online also means that non-authenticated forms of information circulate nearly uncontested, leaving audience themselves as the final, if not the only, arbiter of truth.
The deleterious effects of fake news on democracy and electoral behaviors are well-documented (Bakir and McStay, 2018; Creech and Roessner, 2019). However, in the age of social media, fake news thrives not only because of the automated tools that amplify polarized dialogues but also because it is personally shared among social groups (Kang et al., 2011). Therefore, a social approach to understanding the spread of disinformation within one’s social circle is of timely significance. News sharing on social media is a strategic act to preserve group solidarity because it helps maintain social contact (Goh et al., 2017). If sharing news solidifies social relationships, then sharing the news that the recipients recognizes as fake can potentially corrode the cohesion and spoil the sender’s reputation (Duffy et al., 2020). Avoiding this, then, should be a powerful motivation to authenticate news before offering it to the group. But another implication of such a group process is that the audience might be less likely to authenticate information unless it threatens group cohesion by violating in-group beliefs (Lazer et al., 2018).
The ways news audiences judge news content are also far from being purely evidence-based processes. People tend to believe information produced by trusted others (Turcotte et al., 2015), suggesting that news processing is a social and normative endeavor. Such processing can explain the tenacity of fake news effects on social networks, even after the fake news has been debunked and discredited (Thorson, 2016).
This study investigates the implications of group norms on users’ verification behaviors in the online news environment. Specifically, we draw on self-categorization theory (Turner, 1985) to explicate the entanglement between individual information processing and collective cognition in the social process of news authentication. This is consistent with the assumption that “it is not true that human information processing is purely individual, private, asocial and non-normative” (Turner et al., 1994: 461) and that “the validity of information is (psychologically) established by in-group norms” (Turner, 1991: 171).
We argue that audiences’ motivation and strategies to authenticate news shared with them on social media should be seen as collective acts, guided by in-group norms and aimed at maintaining group cohesion. We establish this framework of news authentication as a collective process through five focus group discussions (FGDs) involving 30 news consumers in Singapore, a small nation marked by high levels of the Internet, mobile phone, and social media use. We investigated the influence of group membership and norms on motivations to authenticate news, how and to what extent people carry out the authentication, as well as the consequences of social reactions to their subsequent authentication practices and group cohesion.
Literature review
Credibility studies
News credibility is at the core of journalists’ occupational ethics. Tuchman (1972) wrote about objective reporting of verifiable facts as a defensive mechanism for journalists to avoid personal and organizational dangers associated with news reporting. In the past, when access to the means of mass communication was limited, only those with recognized credibility were given the privilege to say something to a wide audience. As such, audience members of traditional news relied on a centralized institutional verification of public information.
The rise of web-based information platforms has led to the disintegration of organizational logics in credibility evaluation as anybody with Internet access can, at least theoretically, create public information (Tandoc et al., 2018). The abundance of information online, verified or otherwise, makes information assessment complicated. The literature of credibility studies has identified the credibility assessment strategies, focusing on the individual assessment of source, message, and media (Appelman and Sundar, 2016; Kiousis, 2001). However, in social media ecology, these credibility cues are affected by social cues accompanying the news. A good example is in terms of source reputation. When a piece of news from a questionable source is shared by a trustworthy in-group member on social media, the effects of source reputation become convoluted because the act of sharing by the trusted friend itself may be taken as an act of endorsement, thus obscuring the reputation of the original source (Metzger et al., 2010).
Other than source, message and channel are also key indicators in information evaluation (Appelman and Sundar, 2016). The issue with this approach is it assumes everybody has equal cognitive motivation to perform a systematic evaluation. However, the motivation to assess information credibility is not straightforward and people may have varying degrees of motivation and resources to perform it. For example, news audience tend to verify information only if there are clear rewards for doing so (Lazer et al., 2018). Similarly, Menchen-Trevino and Hargittai (2011) found that college students tend to verify Wikipedia articles only if they believe that doing so affects their grades. Otherwise, they do not verify the information regardless of the message characteristics itself. This suggests that the motivation to assess information credibility is shaped by social factors, such as rewards and status. Understanding this social motivation is important because it determines if users even consider the other credibility cues.
In order to examine the rationales underpinning various authentication behaviors, this study considers news authentication as a social practice and as such, the motivation, strategies, and implications of the practice are likely to be conditioned by various social factors. The findings from past credibility studies on information credibility cues including source, message, and media are valuable, but they must be considered within the social contexts in which the users collectively handle the information. For this, we turn to self-categorization theory, which seeks to explain how individuals make sense of social reality.
Self-categorization theory
Self-categorization theory is a theoretical offshoot of social identity theory, referring specifically to the processes by which individuals identify themselves as belonging to a certain social group based on the similarities in their values and attitudes (Abrams and Hogg, 1990; Turner, 1985). How individuals cognitively process social information, such as news, is “a function of context-dependent self-categorization” (Turner et al., 1994: 461). Consequently, how we learn about our social realities, including how we think about certain people or things, depends on the extent to which we believe that our in-group members would hold relatively similar views as we do. Self-categorization theory has been used to explain the interdependence of individual psychological and social processes in the contexts of persuasion (Wyer, 2010), binge-drinking among college students (Johnston and White, 2003), and media representation of racial minority (Mastro and Kopacz, 2006).
Self-categorization theory challenges the early dominant models of social learning characterized by the duality of information processing. For example, Festinger (1950) posited that to obtain subjective validity, that is, the confidence that one’s belief and attitude toward information are correct and appropriate, one can test the belief through either physical or social reality testing. The former involves using an objective means of verification, such as using a thermometer to measure temperature. In contrast, social reality testing is done when objective measurement is difficult or impossible. For example, objective verification of information about women being forced into arranged marriages in India is impractical to most people. Therefore, to evaluate this information, one must rely on consensual validation from in-group others: if others believe this information is true, then one can use that collective agreement to claim subjective validity. This duality in information processing is also seen in the classic normative-informational models of influence (Deutsch and Gerard, 1955). Whereas normative influence is considered superficial as it is accepted to obtain rewards from socially valued peers or authority, informational influence is considered the “true influence” because it is based on the logical assessment of the message and leads to lasting attitude change. The majority of credibility studies have conceptualized information processing as an either-or process while emphasizing on how individual users process information, isolated from social contexts (Metzger et al., 2010).
These approaches are problematic not because they are unable to explain information behaviors and influence, but because they regard the two mechanisms of influence and information processing as alternatives (Turner, 1991). These models imply that subjective validity can be achieved purely through informational, cognitively sophisticated verification (i.e. physical reality testing and informational influence), without the need for consensual validation or conformation to social norms. In contrast, self-categorization theory considers informational and normative influences as “interdependent phases of social cognition” (Turner, 1991: 152). It traces the connection between self-categorization and information processing to the interplay between in-group norms and subjective validity. Individual information processing is akin to Festinger’s (1950) idea of reality testing, and normative influence can be seen as social validation. They are inseparable because individual processing is unable to provide subjective validity without consensual validation. In other words, while people are free to process information however they wish, unless they can be sure that at least part of the group will reproduce the results, they will still face uncertainty. This important role of social validation can be seen in subsequent work on how individuals validate news online.
Audiences’ acts of authentication
The growing popularity of social media as information sources has prompted social perspectives in understanding information evaluation, particularly the interplay between individual credibility assessment and social membership. Metzger et al. (2010) found evidence of social force at play in web users’ information evaluation, contradicting the conventional, but impractical idea of solitary and systematic means of information evaluation. Their study found that web users rely on collective intelligence and social-based heuristics when judging online information to “minimize cognitive effort and mitigate time pressures through the use of heuristics” (p. 34). Similarly, Flanagin et al. (2014) discovered that web users tend to have favorable attitude toward online information produced by people similar to them, suggesting the effects of group membership on perceived information credibility. These studies illustrate the importance of incorporating a social perspective in understanding information evaluation in the online environment.
In the specific context of social media news, Tandoc et al., (2018) advanced a conceptual framework to examine users’ authentication behaviors. The 3As (Audiences’ Acts of Authentication) model proposes that audiences evaluate news credibility in two phases: internal and external. Internally, individuals authenticate news using their instinct (self), judging the believability of the story (message), legitimacy of the news producer (source), and social cues (popularity). Audiences move to the external (social) means of authentication when “the initial encounter still leaves doubts on the authenticity of the news message” (p. 2755).
The 3As model incorporates the social aspects of news authentication. When an individual sends out news to their social groups after personally judging that it is real, the recipients might still challenge its authenticity. This creates uncertainty within the group because it disconfirms the expectation for in-group agreement (Turner, 1991). Self-categorization theory holds that this uncertainty arising from disagreement among people who are normatively expected to agree mediates social learning. However, if the sharer believes that the news is real and receives no challenge from the recipients, the sharer takes this as behavioral confirmation on the soundness of their authentication techniques, which then feeds back to the internal authentication by reaffirming its validity, regardless of whether or not the news was real.
Theoretical synthesis
Examining how individual users authenticate news within the social media ecology is particularly important given that news consumption is quickly shifting into these platforms, exposing users to both real and fake news. Most credibility studies have investigated the evaluation of general information online, emphasizing individual’s systematic cognitive efforts to discern quality information including source and message credibility. Building on this literature, the 3As model narrowed down the focus to individual’s evaluation of online news, proposing the internal-external model of news authentication. However, given the social characteristics of news consumptions on social media, we also need to expand the focus from individual level of news authentication that has dominated credibility studies to the social processes involved in news authentication. In other words, we need to investigate the interplay between individual and social cognition in the evaluation of social media news. Drawing on self-categorization theory, we argue that just like any other forms of social learning, individuals must obtain subjective validity on their news evaluation. This makes their news evaluation inseparable from the dominant norms of the groups to which they self-identify as belonging. Consequently, their motivation to adopt certain authentication strategies, the degree of their commitment to the authentication acts, and the consequences of such decisions are likely to be conditioned by group norms. Therefore, this study asks:
RQ1. What motivations shape news authentication behaviors?
RQ2. How do individuals engage in social validation of news?
RQ3. How does social validation of news affect group cohesion?
Method
This study is part of a larger research project to investigate changing news consumption practices following the digitalization of news media. The materials analyzed here came from five FGDs involving 30 social media users in Singapore. The respondents were recruited using referrals, starting with a core group of respondents recruited from a large university in Singapore (e.g. non-communication students and non-academic administrative staff). Many of the respondents then invited their friends from outside the university, which made the group discussions conducive for broaching the issues of collective authentication of social media news. News habits have been shown to vary across age groups; therefore, we purposefully recruited respondents based on age categories and conducted the FGDs within each age group: 18–32 (N = 8), 33–47 (N = 8), 48–66 (N = 9), above 66 (N = 5). As a token of appreciation, each respondent received US$35 at the end of the session.
The sessions were conducted in English, although many respondents replied using a local variation, known as Singlish. The FGDs started by broaching the respondents’ news routines including how, where, and when they obtain news. It then proceeded to the topic of news sharing, revealing the position of news in the respondents’ social life. Interestingly, the respondents were usually the ones who raised the issue of fake news in social media. The respondents were then asked about their perception of news credibility and how they determine the authenticity of the news they receive. Finally, the discussion moved to the consequences of sharing news that the recipient called out to be fake, a topic that eventually revealed how the responses from the recipient affect the sender’s subsequent authentication motivation and strategies. The chosen method of FGDs allowed the respondents to pick up on each other’s and generated a good number of examples of fake news. This also helped the respondents recall the specific reactions to false information they have sent or received in the past.
The discussions averaged an hour long and were video recorded for verbatim transcription. The analysis started with two coders reading the transcripts several times to obtain a general sense of the narratives that unfolded during the discussion. Each coder then made personal notes which were coded and categorized gradually into thematic concepts as the coders constantly compared new codes with existing ones (Glaser, 1965). Each week, the two coders were joined by the rest of the researchers to discuss the emerging themes and sharpen the conceptual coherence.
Analytically, several codes including “interpersonal” and “incidental” authentication were drawn from existing literature. These concepts guided the initial analysis akin to open coding (Corbin and Strauss, 2008) when researchers made sense of the common comments such as “I just ask my friends” and “the next day I found out it’s fake.” The core categories, however, were formed based on the inductive analysis of the initial codes which revealed the feedback loop in the authentication strategies. On this stage, the central concept of “social authentication” emerged. For privacy reasons, all names indicated here are pseudonyms.
Findings
The central theme that emerged from the analysis was that news authentication is not an entirely solitary, cognition-driven, and evidence-based process, but a strategic act of information processing that is rooted in the respondents’ self-categorization. Specifically, the respondents’ membership status in various social groups influenced their motivation (and lack thereof) and strategies to authenticate news. The strategies are centered around the use of social cues and group knowledge to assess news credibility. These cues are often communicated during the process of news sharing. Social norms also affect the consequences of authentication behaviors, as well as how they respond to these consequences.
Social motivations for news authentication
When it comes to authentication, all news is not created equal. Respondents were more likely to verify social media news that had impact on themselves and their social relationships. Two specific motivations for news authentication were identified: maintaining self-image and preserving group cohesion.
Maintaining self-mage
Most respondents talked about their authentication practices as being devoted to protecting their positive self-image as they understood the detrimental impacts of sharing fake news on their reputation. Several respondents talked about their experiences when their news offering was discredited by the recipients, making them feel embarrassed, silly, and incompetent. Avoiding these adverse effects of sharing fake news is a powerful motivation to scrutinize the authenticity of any news they wish to share.
One respondent, Aaron, updates his friends overseas on local news regularly to stay in touch, a practice that has earned him a reputation of a news savvy among his friends. To safeguard his trustworthiness, he assures that the news he offers has been carefully appraised for authenticity: “Those are not fake news. You lose credibility yourself if you send out rubbish.”
Another respondent, Darriel, confessed to having made a mistake in the past by forwarding to his WhatsApp group a link that he had received. One of his friends quickly called it out as a scam. When asked to describe how he felt about the incident, he said: “Of course I felt silly. Really stupid me.” From then on, he made it his business to ensure the news he forwards is credible to avoid the same social peril. “So now I am a bit cautious, I don’t share news until I verify it.” The following quote from Christy also illustrates the intense impact of social reaction to sharing fake news on personal reputation: I have got an intelligent friend in my church, and I sent him something. He told me off. He says, because I am one of the elderly in the church, he calls me Aunty Christy: “Aunty Christy, this is not right, check!”
Preserving group cohesion
The second motivation to authenticate news is concerned with maintaining social cohesion. The respondents considered authentication as a way of protecting their community from the hazards of disinformation. A respondent, Nancy, advocated critical thinking when it comes to unverified news that may negatively impact the well-being of her social groups: It’s good to keep your ears open, but if no real way to verify [the news], take it with a pinch of salt. But if you know it affects certain groups of people, affects you, affects your children and your family, then you must wake up to it.
Verifying the news before sharing it was also a way of showing respect to the recipients. Since news sharing is central to the maintenance of social bonds, authentication becomes a moral obligation crucial to the practice of group-based news sharing. To most respondents, it is sometimes wiser not to share news rather than being accused of taking part in the spreading of fake news. A female respondent, Celine, said “If I have the time I double-check, if not I just don’t send. I will just delete it.”
The way group cohesion motivates news authentication is likely to be a consequence of news utility as a gift (Duffy and Ling, 2020). News sharing can be seen as a symbolic act of gifting and authentication acts communicate the sharer’s commitment to presenting only gifts of excellent quality. Sharing fake news is tantamount to bringing stale bread to a housewarming party: instead of expressing one’s thoughtfulness, it undermines the relationship with the recipient. This motivates the respondents to authenticate their news offerings because the authentication acts increase their confidence in their news contribution and maximize the chance of reciprocity.
Not motivated to authenticate news
When analyzing how the maintenance of self-image and group cohesion work as the motivation to authenticate news, it became apparent that insofar as the cohesive goal is achieved, or at the very least not threatened by the news, the respondents were not motivated to verify the news. In this case, the news is considered socially innocuous. There are, however, two conditions necessary to ensure that eschewing authentication does not jeopardize self-image and group cohesion.
First, the audience must have a tacit understanding of the goals and ideological standards of the specific groups with which they share the news. The respondents said that they are members of multiple chat groups including family, church friends, neighbors, schoolmates, and colleagues. These different groups have different goals and ideological standards of information credibility which guide both the selection of news to share and whether the news should be verified beforehand. By sharing only news that conforms to the specific group’s ideology, sharers can expect consensual validation, regardless of whether the information had been rigorously verified. The role of group ideology on selective sharing can be seen in the following conversation between the interviewer and Freddy, a respondent working as a portfolio manager: For example, if there was news about some Muslim who converted to Christianity for instance, and why he converted, I will share that with my Christian group. With that group? Yeah, that particular group. But then you might have a financial group… Freddy: Financial group I won’t share. I will share only the financial news.
Second, the sharers and recipients must share an understanding of the symbolic value of the news. The respondents skip authentication when they believed that the benevolent intention behind their news offering outweighs its informational utility. This was common among the respondents who shared news for comedic purposes such as Mila, a respondent who enjoyed sharing funny news with her relatives “without thinking” because regardless of its authenticity, the news was only meant to entertain: It is not necessarily[fake], it is just funny news. I let to send funny things to my family, especially my son-in-law, he works in Saudi Arabia, I think he needs to be entertained. Even though it may be fake, but at least we say: “Hey, have you seen this?” Just to alert them and just pass on without any real intention. Because we need to alert.
Strategies of collective authentication
The social normativity of news authentication also showed in the strategies used by respondents to validate the authenticity of social media news. The respondents evaluated the news by referring to their stereotypic worldview about the news actors, affiliation with the source, as well as social comparison with others mediated by reciprocal news sharing.
Using stereotypic worldview
The respondents often utilized group knowledge as the framework to assess the believability of a news story. A photo-elicitation question was included in the FGDs, where the respondents looked at screenshots of what looked like news articles. When one respondent, Rita, saw the news article about a Chinese man getting arrested in New York City for selling hot dogs with real dog meat, she judged it as credible because she had heard from her friends that dog meat was indeed a delicacy in China. She said, “I think it is a real one, I heard Chinese from China, they like to eat dog.” Another respondent, Franky, talked about a news report on a wanted girl in Australia who was arrested after she had requested a more attractive mugshot in the Sydney Police’s Facebook post about her. Having heard the good reputation of Australian police authority, Franky dismissed the news as fake because he did not believe such an event could happen under the watch of Australian law enforcement. He said, “I trust Sydney. I interpret in this way: I trust the authorities have done a good job, so this thing shouldn’t happen.” The news, however, was actually authentic.
In both instances, the respondents used internalized in-group knowledge as measures to construct a realm of plausibility: whether it is possible that certain events happen to a certain set of actors under certain circumstances. As Rita said, she had learned from her friends what she knew about the Chinese people’s unusual diet and used it to claim subjective validity for her verdict that the news, which was actually fake, is authentic. Simply put, to Rita, the news “makes sense.” Although this strategy is convenient, it may lead to the persistence of stereotypic views of out-group others as it is much easier to believe fake news that conforms to one’s preconceptions rather than to problematize group knowledge.
Relying on affiliation with the source
The source is also part of the audiences’ authentication framings. Several respondents “followed” the Facebook accounts of legacy news media such as CNN and the Strait Times. The news from these sources generally received a positive credibility stamp. When asked about whether fake news eroded their trust in the news media in general, a respondent, Freddy, replied, “I don’t think so. I think the Straits Times has been with us for decades.”
The respondents reported the challenge of authenticating news from a source with which they are not familiar. One respondent was outright confident the news he saw was fake simply because he did not believe there was a newspaper called The Sydney Morning Herald. It is, however, a real news outlet in Australia. When the respondents are not familiar with the original source, they looked to the people who have shared or commented on the news and take them as the source. A respondent, Rossa, relies on the comment section to determine news authenticity because she trusts that if the news is fake, somebody would call it out. “The fake news I read was about celebrity gossips on Yahoo. It was questionable and I saw the comments and it turned out to be fake news.”
Interpersonal contexts influence the perceived credibility of social media news as evident in the audience’s tendency to trust news endorsed by trusted contacts (Turcotte et al., 2015). Our analysis further confirmed this. When our respondents had limited resources to personally assess source credibility, either because of a lack of knowledge or missing source credibility cues, the brand legitimacy of the original source moves to the background, replaced by the familiarity and trust between them and the people who have interacted with the news.
Sharing is authenticating
The respondents also authenticated news with the help of friends and family. The most popular platform used to share news among the respondents is WhatsApp, which is also where most of the collective authentication takes place.
Interestingly, the respondents did not explicitly ask for help to verify the news. Instead, there seemed to be an underlying moral obligation to help each other evaluate the news that circulated in their groups. A respondent, Harry, decided to share suspicious video footage with his brother, not only because the video content was intriguing, but also because he believed that his brother would tell him if the video was real, even if he did not specifically ask for verification. The video turned out to be fake: So how did you feel when you got that? Do you feel embarrassed that you sent something like that? No, not really. I just send it to him to verify, because I have no way to verify, but for him it’s easier because he’s involved in those, so he knows that… But you suspected that it was fake, so you ask him to verify? I didn’t ask him. I just send it to him knowing that he will respond to me when he checks his phone. I send the link, it is okay. But, sometimes I say, I didn’t verify, please verify. So now I accompany with, “please verify.” So, you might send something out before you go through the whole… Yeah, I said, this has come to me, I am sorry I don’t have the time, so please verify.
One way to understand how this works is by looking at both reciprocal news sharing and authentication acts as overlapping parts of social reality testing (Festinger, 1950) by comparing one’s opinion and attitude toward the news with other people’s. People share news in order to see what other people think about it, thus engaging in social comparison to obtain subjective validity (Turner, 1991). The responses to the news serve as comparative information that validates the sharer’s attitude and perception toward the news. If the recipients agree that the news is authentic, the sharer takes the agreement as evidence of the soundness of their initial judgment. If the recipients disagree with the news authenticity, the disconfirmation of the expectation to agree creates uncertainty that modifies the sharer’s future behavior. Several respondents took this disagreement discouragingly and stopped sharing news completely. On a more positive note, however, the majority of the respondents took this disagreement as an opportunity to recalibrate their authentication mechanism, for example, by adding fact-checking services to their repertoire of authentication tools.
This further crystallizes the social aspects of news authentication. Here, news credibility assessment is not a solitary endeavor entirely dictated by the individual cognitive parameters. Instead, the news audience act as members of a social group when processing the news. This was evident in how the respondents used the group worldview to determine the story plausibility and how they responded to the social reaction from the in-group others.
Social consequences of news authentication
The social nature of news authentication also manifested in the consequences of helping each other identify fake news. Collective authentication benefits group cohesion by promoting social interdependence among group members and creating a ritual of social processing of news.
Institutionalization of informational interdependence
The mutual expectation of collective authentication may strengthen social bonds because it reinforces informational interdependence among group members. We found that the more intimate the group is, the more dependent they are on each other. Several respondents said that when they did not have time to read the news, they simply asked their friends for a summary. An explicit request for help to authenticate news is often unnecessary, suggesting the taken-for-grantedness of interpersonal trust and reliance between respondents and their peers. A respondent, David, spoke about a friend in his chat group who had a reputation as the “information police.” Instead of using fact-checking sites, David sent the news to the group and trusted that the colleague would help tell him if it is fake: Oh, I have heard of it [the fact-checking site] but I have not really used it. But anyway, in the chat groups I have, of course almost every group would have some “policeman” and some “watchman.” Eh, this is fake news, and alert us. So, after a few times, we are more sensible.
The respondents were also more likely to perceive systematic authentication, such as the use of fact-checking services, as imperative if the influence comes from their in-group friends. The majority of respondents who have developed the habit of verifying news before sending it out were urged to do so after a mishap. They talked about how they updated their mental list of authenticity cues after their initial strategies failed to accurately judge news credibility. For example, Franky said, After one or two bad incidents, that the news happened to be fake, now I will test through this one website that you can check. I can’t remember the name now, but you can send it and they will verify whether the news is fake or not. So, I will verify, I will be more cautious rather than sending it away.
Ritualization of collective authentication
Collective authentication generates feelings of solidarity when it is transformed into a ritual of news processing among group members. Our respondents frequently specified WhatsApp chatgroups as their primary source of social updates. The following conversation highlighted the ritualization of authentication in WhatsApp chatgroups: I mean, interestingly, on the WhatsApp news, nowadays all of my friends are alerting each other: “Hey, check it out! Don’t believe.” So they’re not sending news, they’re sending warnings. No, no! First an article, then somebody that is alert says I don’t think that’s true. Don’t believe until you check it out. So now we are in that mind, we don’t totally believe news anymore, 100%.
The respondents said they could expect two to three news articles a day from their chatgroups, a small percentage of the total stream of messages in the groups as the majority is made up of “chit chat.” This banter contributes to group cohesion by enhancing the member’s ability to orient their daily activities. Shared news also helps centralize members’ attention and focus the conversation, if momentarily, thus fueling mediated social interaction devoted to processing the news. A respondent, Rose, said, There is something about fake news, we all have the skills to verify. I usually Google search it and read forum. What I can draw conclusion is the authenticity according to facts provided by netizens and all. In fact, it contributes to good small-talk among colleagues and all.
Discussion
While dominant theorizing on news authentication behaviors has focused on individual processes, this study argues that news authentication should be understood as a collective endeavor. Through FGDs conducted in Singapore, a country known for ubiquitous online connectivity, we find that the motivations, rituals, and consequences associated with news authentication are mostly social. First, the extent to which the news audience is committed to careful authentication is determined by their intention to preserve group harmony. Second, the audience often invoked group knowledge and social cues when assessing news authenticity. Third, news authentication rituals can enhance feelings of solidarity by solidifying the dependency among group members for socially valid information and allowing for the expression of mutual commitment to the relationship. Fourth, when news is shared, authenticated or otherwise, there is a social consequence that influences the social relationships and subsequent news authentication behaviors. Taken together, these findings suggest that self-categorization shapes group memberships which in turn impose important parameters that define news authentication behaviors on social media.
One of the key findings in this study is the social motivations that shape news authentication behaviors. Equally interesting, however, are the cases where news audiences collectively lack the motivation to verify news. Specifically, if the news echoes the recipients’ group ideology, the motivation to verify it weakens due to the expectation for consensual agreement. Consequently, the information circulating in a group may strengthen the group’s solidarity while possibly reinforcing social stigma and prejudice against out-group others, especially if the news sees out-group others in a negative light. This was the case of Rita, the respondent who heard that people in China enjoy dog meat, and inferred therefrom that Chinese food products are not to be trusted. Indeed, behaviors driven by individuals’ self-categorization may validate the sense of belonging in the group, but often at the expense of fair representation and attitude toward non-similar others (Mastro and Kopacz, 2006).
While the findings of this study are illuminating, there are also several limitations. First, this exploratory study is based on FGDs involving 30 individuals, and while we made sure that we involved individuals from a range of generations, future studies can expand what we started here by involving more participants. For example, we excluded those below 21 years old primarily due to the limitations set by our institutional review board, but we also acknowledge that adolescents and young adults are heavy social media users and belong to social groups that form and function differently from those of older people. Future research can investigate how youth digital culture affects adolescents’ and young adults’ authentication behaviors. Second, we focused on Singapore, a small country with high levels of Internet and social media use. Future studies can build on our results to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the social aspects of news authentication by conducting similar studies in other media contexts.
The dominant approach in credibility studies has been effective in describing web users’ individual assessments of the quality of the information they gather online. The chief shortcoming of this approach is the assumption that it is possible to obtain subjective validity without social validation. It implies that information carries credibility in and of itself, waiting to be discovered. In contrast, self-categorization theory holds that information credibility arises as a result of a socially validated process of thinking. The main motivation to authenticate news is to obtain subjective validity, which necessarily requires consensual validation from other people.
We do not argue that internal authentication cannot lead to subjective validity. Social validation can be achieved through either behavioral or perceptual confirmation (Turner, 1991). Behavioral confirmation occurs when an individual directly receives social feedback on their news offering, as in the case of those who share or talk about the news. Perceptual confirmation, on the other hand, occurs when the individual believes that the categories they have used to assess a certain news story had been socially validated and the result is not idiosyncratic, in that at least part of the group is likely to reproduce the conclusion (Turner et al., 1994). This is possible because the group norms that govern categorization, the way we understand people and things around us, are not only descriptive but also prescriptive: they outline how socially capable members should think and behave (Abrams and Hogg, 1990). By adhering to these socially approved ways of thinking, each member can obtain social validation on their individual cognition even in a physical isolation. One implication is when the recipients recognize the news as fake but decide not to call it out to avoid hurting the sharer’s feeling, they may inadvertently declare their agreement and validate the sharer’s defective authentication mechanism.
Conceptualizing news authentication as a social process has important practical and theoretical implications. First, it recontextualizes the problem of fake news as well as the interventions to address it. Fact-checking initiatives should be aimed not just at individual users because debunking fake news is a collective effort. How do we then incentivize those who recognize fake news to engage in proactive correction within their social groups even if the news violates the group’s dominant belief system? Second, studies testing factors that make individuals susceptible to believing fake news should also account for social contexts.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by a Tier 2 Grant from the Ministry of Education, Singapore, under the grant number MOE2015-T2-1-042.
