Detecting Effects of Misinformation Through Emotion and Trace Behavior

To explore the impact of misinformation on social media, this study employed a text analysis process to first identify topics within online rhetoric and emotion toward misinformation on Facebook. Then, emotion and advertising behavioral measures were used to examine the relationship between six discrete emotions and advertising costs. Facebook advertising click-through data were collected between the months of January and November 2020 totaling 44 weeks of data from a sample of 20 national U.S. businesses that advertised on Facebook during the analysis time frame. The regression revealed that fear, identified in the online discourse mentioning misinformation, had a positive and significant relationship with click-through rates. In sum, the results suggest that as fear of misinformation increases, so does the available attention of social media users. Policy implications are discussed.