The effect of active engagement on belief in and perceptions of social media posts

Abstract

As people browse social media, they can actively engage with posts or passively read what’s presented. These choices may then change people’s beliefs and attitudes towards the content. Existing research finds that active engagement with persuasive messages increases belief change. Similar psychological processes likely occur with online news reading and sharing. In our study participants selected social media posts (true and false news headlines) that they would be willing to share online. They then typed hypothetical comments for half of the posts while passively viewing the others. In two pre-registered experiments (N=1798), we tested if active engagement influences belief and perceptions towards true and false headlines. Across both studies, engaged news items were judged to be more emotional intense. Furthermore, the influence of commenting on news perception varied depending on participants' initial motivations for engaging with the content. Our studies demonstrate that how individuals process and interpret news content.