What Promotes News Sharing in Online Spaces

Insights from a Multilevel Analysis of Survey-Experimental Research

Abstract

This paper explores factors influencing the willingness to share political and social information, focusing on message characteristics, including moral content as per Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) and the perception of headlines as “Interestingness-If-True” (IIT). It also examines social-psychological tendencies towards information contact. Results indicate that headlines about fairness violations were positively associated with sharing willingness compared to neutral ones, though the effect was limited. The paper also analyzes IIT as a dependent variable, revealing the relevance of fairness violation headlines. This paper reports the main findings of these analyses.