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Sharing Is Not Always Caring

at March 10, 2022

Note: The No War Ukrainian banner that has appeared as part of the background on this blog was not something I added. I guess whoever created this template updated it to include the banner. I do support Ukraine and hope that the conflict will end and that they will remain their own country, but I'm not so quick to share political opinions or statements like that.

And, that leads us right into today's blog post. Sharing is an action on the internet that is everywhere. Most consumable content has share buttons. Even software user interfaces, such as the toolbar on iPhone's Safari browser have sharing built-in. It goes the same with phone apps, where photos, content, etc are all sharable to other phones using email, text messaging, Bluetooth, or using social apps such as Facebook and Twitter.

And it's quick. You can share something with someone else in as little as 5 seconds, faster than that if you are a skilled user. Many things that get shared online are done so without much thought. For example, you see a news article with a headline proclaiming that someone recently stole half a million dollars from an organization, the sensational headline may prompt you to share it to a social timeline or feed. Yet once you read the article, you may learn that it was a hoax, that the news source was unreliable, or that it was very different than your initial assumption. It may even be an article written by The Onion, a news website that specializes in fake news content.

Content such as shared on social media can be controversial. Often individuals who are on one side of an issue will share any content that supports their belief, even if the content is non-factual. Fact-checking warnings have become popular on social media websites over the past three years, with misleading content having a flagged overlay. Some users continue to call the fact-checkers wrong and will continue to share that sort of content.

So-called fake news is a problem in today's society. It used to be common knowledge that anything coming from the Internet has a high probability to be false. A child under the age of ten is capable of creating and sharing such content without adult supervision if so desired, so who is to say that user John Smith on Twitter has checked the information he shared. Yet, people take and repost shared content without much thought.

For example, we can dive right into US politics. One side may say that Joe Biden is causing gas prices to rise. The other side will say that it is not true. Regardless of who is correct in this situation, many users will repost any sort of content that supports their particular belief. They may even have doubts about their own belief but will continue to share content to reinforce their own beliefs. 

S. Talwar et al. (2019) researched metrics on Online Trust, Self-disclosure, Social Comparison, Fear of Missing Out, and Social Media Fatigue as it pertains to outright sharing of fake news or self-authenticating news before sharing. They found that social media fatigue causes users to share fake news (Talwar 2019). The research also tests all other metrics and assigns values to each.

An article by Shannon Gupta (2016) tells the story of Pepsi's CEO, Indra Nooyi, who was the target of fake news stories shared where he wanted supporters of president-elect Donald Trump to "take their business elsewhere". This started a boycott of the brand, which was premature, as he never said those words at all. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, defended critics, saying that it was a "small amount of content". He said this in a statement also proclaiming that it did not influence the presidential election at the time, to be clear.

And what I am getting at is this. If you want to share or post content on a social media platform, it is wise to figure out if it is true, and it is also wise to make sure that your statements are not an insult to others who may not share your belief. It is one thing to post something true and insulting, but it is much more damaging to post something that is only an opinion and insulting, especially if it is someone you should care about. With how quickly users can share in 2022, it is a good idea to think before sending off that piece of content to your social feed.

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