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 language | English |
---|---|
Journal | Social Media and Society |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 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/