How Narcissism and Susceptibility to Emotional Contagion Affect Belief in Fake News on Social Media from a Dual Information Processing Perspective: A Hybrid SEM and ANN Approach

Objectives: To answer who believes in fake news and provide strategies to combat it, we examined how narcissism and susceptibility to emotional contagion influences belief in fake news on social media through heuristic and systematic processing; we also evaluated the moderating effect of media literacy. In addition, we ranked the relative importance of these factors to belief in fake news. Methods: We used a hybrid structural equation modeling (SEM) and artificial neural networks (ANN) approach to analyze data collected from 347 respondents in an online survey. Results: The SEM results showed that narcissism and susceptibility to emotional contagion positively influenced heuristic and systematic processing, thus positively influencing belief in fake news. Media literacy moderated the relationship between systematic processing and belief in fake news. Conclusion: The ANN results indicated that narcissism is a more critical factor for belief in fake news. ANN predicted belief in fake news with an accuracy of 99.9%.