Fighting rumors to fight COVID-19: Investigating rumor belief and sharing on social media during the pandemic

The outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, a significant health threat, influenced information-related behaviors and induced increased rumor-sharing behaviors on social media. Fighting COVID-19 thus entails the need to fight the rumors as well, providing a strong motivation to explore rumor-related behavior during this extraordinary period. From the perspective of information acquisition, we predicted that information acquisition from social and traditional media would interactively influence rumor-related decisions (i.e., rumor belief and sharing) and that critical thinking would shape this relationship. Through a survey of 2424 individuals who used social media during the pandemic, we found that information acquisition from social media was negatively related to rumor sharing and that rumor belief mediated this relationship. Meanwhile, information acquisition from traditional media weakened the negative effect of information acquisition from social media on rumor belief, and critical thinking alleviated the positive effect of rumor belief on rumor sharing. This study contributes to the literature by explaining the diffusion of COVID-19 rumors on social media from an information perspective and revealing how different information sources and thinking styles come into conflict in rumor decisions.