Fake news self-efficacy, fake news identification, and content sharing on Facebook

ABSTRACT This study explored the concept of self-efficacy in the context of fake news identification and sharing on Facebook. The results indicated that those scoring high on a measure of Facebook-based fake news self-efficacy (i.e., confidence in one’s ability to identify factually incorrect current events information on Facebook) performed increasingly well on a fake news identification and classification task. For its part, the ability to identify and properly classify fake news was shown to be negatively related to the self-reported likelihood of sharing of fake news on Facebook.