Exploring fake news sharing behavior about brands across social media

Purpose In today’s world, the increasing significance of social media as a news outlet has brought its benefits and drawbacks for brands and companies. One such drawback is individuals sharing fake news about brands and organizations. While existing research offers essential insights into sharing decisions, studies focusing mainly on sharing fake news on social media remain relatively absent in the mainstream literature. In such an environment, this study attempts to identify the fake news-sharing behavior about brands across social media. Design/methodology/approach The study was a quantitative survey using self-administered questionnaires distributed among 211 social media users living in the Colombo district, Sri Lanka. The study sample was chosen based on the non-probabilistic purposive sampling method. Findings The study found that social conversation significantly impacts the instantaneous sharing of news to create awareness, and self-management significantly impacts the instantaneous sharing of news to create awareness and authenticate news before sharing. Interestingly, authenticating news before sharing has a significant impact on active corrective actions and passive corrective actions when sharing fake news. Originality/value This study contributes to filling the existing gap in the literature by enhancing knowledge on the sharing behavior of social media users while practically supporting marketers to control the fake news sharing about their brands by identifying the sharing behavior of customers.