Social Media Behavior

Patterns and practices of how people use social media, including which accounts they follow, what content they share, and what topics they engage with. Research examines how individual differences (personality, cognitive style, demographics) and platform features shape social media activity.

Key finding

Individual cognitive reflection predicts a wide range of social media behaviors: higher-CRT users are more selective in account following, preferentially share higher-quality news sources, and engage more with substantive topics. This extends understanding of information behavior from laboratory settings to naturalistic online contexts.

Key papers

• Vraga & Tully (2021) — News literacy, social media behaviors, and skepticism toward information on social media: National survey showing that news literacy predicts less exposure and posting of political content on Facebook and YouTube; examines platform-specific effects and shows actual knowledge differs from perceived ability in predicting engagement
• Grinberg et al. (2019) — Fake news on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. presidential election: characterizes who engages with fake news on social media; older, conservative, highly politically engaged users drive fake news exposure; shows sharing decisions driven by political congruency rather than article veracity.
• Effron & Raj (2020) — Misinformation and Morality: Encountering Fake-News Headlines Makes Them Seem Less Unethical to Publish and Share — demonstrates that moral intuitions about sharing misinformation weaken with familiarity; repeated exposure increases likelihood of actual headline selection for sharing
• Cognitive reflection correlates with behavior on Twitter — Comprehensive analysis of how cognitive reflection predicts account selection, news source sharing, and topic engagement on Twitter