Beyond the Headline: How We Decide What to Believe
Seeing, sharing and believing are different activities. Understanding their relationship helps explain why information can circulate widely without becoming reliable knowledge.
Someone shares a sensational headline on social media. It receives hundreds of reactions, travels through several group chats and eventually appears in a discussion about public policy. What does this tell us?
We know the message circulated. We cannot conclude that everyone who shared it believed it, understood its evidence or intended to persuade others. A person may forward an article to question it, express concern, entertain friends or signal membership of a group. Communication behaviour does not have a single meaning.
This is where epistemic communication becomes useful as an analytical perspective: it asks how claims move between people, what gives them credibility and when accepting them is justified.
The difference researchers observed
In March 2021, Pennycook and colleagues published research in Nature examining why people share inaccurate news. Across four survey experiments and a field experiment on X/Twitter, they compared accuracy judgements with decisions about sharing information.
Participants often distinguished accurate from inaccurate headlines when explicitly evaluating truth, but their sharing choices were less discerning. A simple prompt drawing attention to accuracy improved the quality of material they subsequently shared. In the X/Twitter experiment, the researchers measured changes in shared news, not the establishment of knowledge in users' minds.
Accuracy is not always the task in view
One interpretation is that users often attend to something other than accuracy when deciding whether to share: perhaps how interesting, relevant or socially meaningful the post seems. Redirecting attention can influence that choice.
The finding was not confined to a single experiment. In 2022, Pennycook and Rand examined 20 experiments involving 26,863 participants and found further support for accuracy prompts improving discernment in sharing intentions. Results from controlled tasks nevertheless require care when applied to changing platforms and real-world behaviour.
An alternative explanation: belonging matters
Attention is not the whole explanation. A post may express loyalty, humour, moral concern or disagreement. Sharing can maintain a relationship or communicate an identity, even when the original claim is doubtful.
A 2022 review by Ecker and colleagues examines cognitive, social and emotional influences on misinformation belief. These perspectives need not be mutually exclusive: attention, social incentives and prior beliefs may operate together. The relative importance of each can change with context.
How circulation acquires authority
Imagine that several accounts repeat a statistic from the same unverified report. Readers may encounter the claim as though it had independent support from multiple sources. The number of appearances does not necessarily indicate the number of independent investigations.
Journalistic attribution, platform design and community relationships all influence that journey. A newsroom can trace the original figures; a platform can display source context; a reader can ask for clarification. These are different contributions to knowledge-building, not interchangeable solutions.
A better question before sharing
The ACRL information literacy framework treats evaluating authority as contextual rather than automatic. That distinction is useful at the moment of sharing.
Before forwarding a consequential claim, ask: Am I sharing this because I know it is supported, because I find it interesting, or because I want somebody to discuss it? All three are recognisable reasons, but they communicate different things.
Making the purpose visible is one small way to prevent circulation from being mistaken for confirmation.
Key sources
Pennycook, G., et al. (2021). Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online. Nature.
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2022). Accuracy prompts are a replicable and generalizable approach for reducing the spread of misinformation. Nature Communications.
Ecker, U. K. H., et al. (2022). The psychological drivers of misinformation belief and its resistance to correction. Nature Reviews Psychology.
Association of College and Research Libraries. (2015). Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.
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