ArticlePolitical behavior2023
The Relationship Between Social Media Use and Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation.
Article in Political behavior, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
41 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Contemporary trends in psychological research on conspiracy beliefs. A systematic review.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Pooled it
- Psychological understanding of misinformation and disinformation in the face of environmental crises: Introduction to the special issue.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2026Article
- Examining the Effect of Message Framing and Demographic Traits on Public Support for a Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Program.Sexual abuse : a journal of research and treatment · 2026Article
- Shattered Safety? Developmental Trajectories for Conspiracy Mentality and Violent Extremist Attitudes.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2026Article
- Disinformation elicits learning biases.eLife · 2026Article
- Misinformation in Social Media Narratives on Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza: Systematic Content Analysis of Facebook and Instagram Posts.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Exploring the Relationship Between Susceptibility to Health Misinformation and Vaccine Hesitancy in Poland.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Understanding Violent Radicalization and Conspiracy Belief in Dutch Youth Aged 16-25: A Latent Profile Analysis.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2026Article
- Beyond deficit and coexistence: Modeling the knowledge-conspiracy-mistrust configuration in public understanding of science.PloS one · 2026Article
- The limited effects of social media use on misperceptions Social media's limited role in misperceptions.PloS one · 2026Article
- Knowledge gaps about the diagnosis and treatment of hypothyroidism: an international patient survey.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2025Article
- Disinformation and Regime Survival.Political research quarterly · 2024Article
- Share If You Believe, Comment If You Doubt: The Effect of Source of Information, Trust, and Belief in Conspiracy Theories on Engagement with Facebook Posts.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Conspiracy beliefs and negative attitudes towards outgroups in times of crises: Experimental evidence from Germany.PloS one · 2024Article
- Justifying an Invasion: When Is Disinformation Successful?Political communication · 2024Article
- You must be myths-taken: Examining belief in falsehoods during the COVID-19 health crisis.PloS one · 2024Article
- Correlates of COVID-19 conspiracy theory beliefs in Japan: A cross-sectional study of 28,175 residents.PloS one · 2024Article
- News Waves: Hard News, Soft News, Fake News, Rumors, News Wavetrains.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Fear of war in Germany: An observational study.Heliyon · 2023Article
- Buffering against exposure to mental health misinformation in online communities on Facebook: the interplay of depression literacy and expert moderation.BMC public health · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Numerous studies find associations between social media use and beliefs in conspiracy theories and misinformation. While such findings are often interpreted as evidence that social media causally promotes conspiracy beliefs, we theorize that this relationship is conditional on other individual-level predispositions. Across two studies, we examine the relationship between beliefs in conspiracy theories and media use, finding that individuals who get their news from social media and use social media frequently express more beliefs in some types of conspiracy theories and misinformation. However, we also find that these relationships are conditional on conspiracy thinking--the predisposition to interpret salient events as products of conspiracies--such that social media use becomes more strongly associated with conspiracy beliefs as conspiracy thinking intensifies. This pattern, which we observe across many beliefs from two studies, clarifies the relationship between social media use and beliefs in dubious ideas. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11109-021-09734-6.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.