THE IMPACT OF MEDIA LITERACY ON THE INTENTION TO SHARE FAKE INFORMATION IN SOCIAL NETWORKS

Fake news has always existed, but not to the extent in which it can be disseminated today through social networks. Novel and credible news are shared more often without verifying its veracity, more based on the interest its content arouses. Furthermore, Facebook is one of the most used social media to share news, and has become the main social network in the world due to the number of users who maintain an active account for entertainment purposes and to connect with friends and family. On the other hand, media literacy involves acquiring skills and knowledge to read, interpret and produce a certain type of material, both written and audiovisual, in order to obtain intellectual tools and capacities to participate fully in our culture and society. That said, this study aimed to analyze how factors such as the level of digital literacy or the interest in the content of the message influence the intention to share unverified or fake information. For this purpose, a causal research was carried out through a survey applied to 322 respondents between 18 and 65 years old. With the results, a confirmatory factorial analysis was carried out. The results show an acceptable goodness of fit as well as a reliable and valid measuring instrument. Subsequently, the structural model was run to test the hypotheses. The proposed structural model of some factors that influence the intention to share fake information show that, when the interest in the message content is high, the intention to share unverified or fake information is greater; also, a higher level of digital literacy implicates a lower intention to share unverified or fake information. A non-significant relationship was found between the motivation to use Facebook as entertainment and the interest in sharing unverified or fake information. With these results, the importance of digital literacy is evident in order to have critical citizens who better distinguish if information should be shared or not.