Facts or Feelings? Leveraging Emotionality as a Fact-Checking Strategy on Social Media in the United States

Haoning Xue, Jingwen Zhang*, Xinzhi Zhang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review

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Abstract

Emotionality is a well-established strategy for boosting audience engagement on social media. While fact-checking is positioned to provide objective information, fact-checking posts on social media often involve heightened emotionality. How much emotionality is present and how emotionality influences audience engagement and public sentiment toward fact-checked targets remain largely understudied. Informed by social psychological frameworks explicating message-level factors influencing public engagement and sentiment, the present study examines emotionality in 49,270 fact-checking posts created by 10 United States fact-checking organizations on Facebook from 2017 to 2022. Results showed that emotionality in fact-checking posts significantly increased by 13.5% over the years. Editorial fact-checkers (e.g., Washington Post) used higher levels of emotionality than independent fact-checkers (e.g., snopes.com). Emotionality positively indicated public engagement as predicted. However, in both fact-checked true and false information, emotionality was negatively associated with the public’s sentiment toward fact-checked targets, suggesting a potential spillover effect on stories verified to be true. This study reveals that emotionality in fact-checking posts boosts social media engagement yet with the potential of compromising fact-checking effectiveness. © The Author(s) 2025
Original languageEnglish
JournalSocial Media and Society
Volume11
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2025

Research Keywords

  • computational communication research,
  • emotionality
  • fact-checking
  • public engagement
  • sentiment analysis
  • social media

Publisher's Copyright Statement

  • This full text is made available under CC-BY-NC 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

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