Why would someone make up a story or share an unverified rumor? As Craig Silverman noted in Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content, a 2016 report for Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, behavioral economist Cass Sunstein identified four main types of rumor propagators in his book On Rumors. Here is a quick explanation of what they are and how they apply to the information we see online:
In the case of the coronavirus pandemic, we see all of those motivations playing out in our social media feeds. And you might be surprised to discover the biggest misinformation vector in the current crisis: people acting on the altruistic impulse to help others avoid infection — and sharing misinformation without realizing that it’s false or misleading.
Excerpted from: https://newslit.org/updates/covid-19-dont-share-misinformation/