Are we more likely to believe a social media news story shared by someone with whom we have a strong or weak tie? We tend to trust close ties more than weak ties, but weak ties are sources of new information more often than strong ones. We conducted an online experiment to examine the effect of tie strength (strong ties vs. weak ties) on the decision to believe or not believe fake news stories. Participants perceived false stories from weak ties to be more believable than false stories from strong ties (after controlling for the trustworthiness of the sharer). We found that a sharer's perceived ability to share reliable information plays a significant role in individuals' decision to believe news stories on social media, regardless of whether the source is a strong or weak tie. Interestingly, a sharer's perceived integrity was found to be important only when the information came from weak ties, while a sharer's perceived benevolence was not important for either weak or strong ties. These findings show that the perceived integrity of the sharer is a key factor in the decision to believe stories from weak ties, more so than from strong ties. Furthermore, a sharer's perceived ability to share reliable information is less critical when weak ties share true stories. The impact of weak ties does not stem from the novelty of their information, as we used identical headlines across both study groups. Thus, while the strength of weak ties effect is present in this context, the underlying theoretical mechanism differs from the novelty of information traditionally observed in other settings.

中文翻译：

---

弱关系的强度和假新闻的可信度


我们是否更有可能相信与我们关系密切或关系较弱的人分享的社交媒体新闻故事？与弱关系相比，我们更倾向于信任密切关系，但弱关系比强关系更容易成为新信息的来源。我们进行了一项在线实验，研究关系强度（强关系与弱关系）对相信或不相信假新闻故事的决定的影响。参与者认为，来自弱关系的虚假故事比来自强关系的虚假故事更可信（在控制了分享者的可信度之后）。我们发现，分享者分享可靠信息的感知能力在个人决定相信社交媒体上的新闻报道方面发挥着重要作用，无论来源是强关系还是弱关系。有趣的是，只有当信息来自弱关系时，共享者感知到的诚信才重要，而共享者感知到的仁慈对于弱关系或强关系都不重要。这些发现表明，分享者的诚信感知是决定相信弱关系故事的关键因素，而不是强关系故事。此外，当弱关系分享真实故事时，分享者分享可靠信息的感知能力就不那么重要了。弱关系的影响并非源于其信息的新颖性，因为我们在两个研究组中使用了相同的标题。因此，虽然在这种情况下存在弱关系效应的强度，但其潜在的理论机制不同于传统上在其他环境中观察到的信息的新颖性。