Understanding News Sharing Decisions On Social Media

181 pagesNews sharing has become a common user behavior in social networking services (SNS) and has been extensively studied as an emerging community practice. This dissertation presents four studies extending current news sharing knowledge. It also provides promising new directions for future investigation. Study 1 suggests that news sharing is a complex process. There are different cognitive processes pre, during, and after- one clicks the sharing button. Study 2 indicates that college students choose to share news on Instagram because it is easy to use, visually appealing, and easy connection to peers. Study 3 suggests that when an incentive is given, there are chances the initial sharing or non-sharing decision can be reversed. Study 4 examines international students’ news reading and sharing experiences on social media and indicates that they face language and cultural barriers when reading news in the host country and adopt various strategies to identify the veracity of the news piece. Moving forward, this dissertation calls for future collaboration of various disciplines such as information science, computer science, communication and psychology. Finally, to reduce misinformation sharing, I provide recommendations that scholars and designers can test to solve this urgent social issue