Commitment-Driven Information Seeking in Misinformation Consumption

The role of social media in misinformation consumption remains contested. This disagreement might arise from the failure to distinguish incidental exposure to misinformation from deliberate consumption. We address this gap by analyzing incoming traffic data, collected in November 2020, to more than 2,000 websites that vary in misinformation and type of bias (liberal, conservative, and conspiracy). We compare the traffic modalities through which users reach those sites: direct traffic, such as typing a URL or using a bookmark (mostly associated with self-directed information seeking); social traffic, from links clicked on social media; and search traffic, from search engines (mostly associated with incidental exposure). We found that reliable, low-misinformation websites are reached mainly via search traffic, whereas unreliable ones are mostly reached via direct traffic; this pattern is stronger for conspiracy websites. Breaking down social traffic by platform reveals that Facebook was the main driver of traffic towards unreliable websites, mostly towards politically biased and entry-level conspiracy websites. These findings suggest that structural interventions such as algorithmic adjustments and content moderation may reduce incidental exposure among users with low belief commitment, but are unlikely to deter highly committed information seekers, who require targeted, ideologically informed strategies.