The retransmission of rumor and rumor correction messages on Twitter

• Main Authors: CHUA, Alton Y. K., TEE, Cheng-Ying, PANG, Augustine, LIM, Ee-Peng
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2017
• Subjects: Rumor; Rumor correction; Retransmission; Twitter; Retweetability; Business and Corporate Communications; Databases and Information Systems; Social Media
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/5951; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/lkcsb_research/article/6950/viewcontent/The_retransmission_of_rumor_and_rumor_correction_messages_on_twit.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This article seeks to examine the relationships among source credibility, message plausibility, message type (rumor or rumor correction) and retransmission of tweets in a rumoring situation. From a total of 5,885 tweets related to the rumored death of the founding father of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew, 357 original tweets without an “RT” prefix were selected and analyzed using negative binomial regression analysis. The results show that source credibility and message plausibility are correlated with retransmission. Also, rumor correction tweets are retweeted more than rumor tweets. Moreover, message type moderates the relationship between source credibility and retransmission as well as that between message plausibility and retransmission. By highlighting some implications for theory and practice, this article concludes with some limitations and suggestions for further research.