Information Behavior towards False Information and “Fake News” on Facebook: The Influence of Gender, User Type and Trust in Social Media

In this paper, we present a survey study with 119 participants conducted in German, which investigates respondents’ Facebook behavior. In particular, the survey provides insight into how the individual factors gender, user type and trust in social media influence information behavior with respect to false information on Facebook. Our participants’ Facebook use is predominantly passive, the trust in social media is mediocre and most users claim to encounter false information on a weekly basis. If the truthfulness of information is verified it is mostly done by checking alternative sources and for the most part, users do not react actively to false information on Facebook. Of the different categories of Facebook users studied, more active and intensive users of Facebook (posters and heavy users) encounter false information the most. These users are the only user group to report posts with false information to Facebook or interact with the post. Participants with higher trust in social media tend to check the comments of a post to verify information.