The Mechanism of Tendentious Information Dissemination in Cyberspace

• Published in: Applied sciences 2024-10, Vol.14 (20), p.9505
• Main Authors: Zong, Teng, Chen, Bing, Wang, Fengsi, Wei, Xin, Liu, Yibo, Hu, Zongmin, Li, Taowei
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analysis; Attitudes; Cognition & reasoning; cyberspace; dissemination mechanism; Information dissemination; Laws, regulations and rules; Social networks; structural equation model; tendentious information; theory of planned behavior
• ISSN: 2076-3417; 2076-3417
• DOI: 10.3390/app14209505

Cyberspace has evolved into a hub for the dissemination of large amounts of tendentious information, posing significant challenges to the role of mainstream value information. As netizens’ are the main recipients of tendentious information, their personal cognition, attitude, and behavioral ability affect their willingness to re-disseminate information, making them an inalienable force in the promotion of information dissemination. Exploring the dissemination mechanism of tendentious information in cyberspace can help to understand the law of information dissemination and predict the trend of information diffusion, which is of great significance to maintaining information security and social stability. However, the existing research has overlooked the potential influence of the attribute characteristics of information in terms of content, and has failed to overcome the methodological constraints of traditional statistical analysis to accurately describe the variables and mechanisms influencing the dissemination of tendentious information at the cognitive level. Therefore, using structural equation modeling, we propose a research index system based on the Theory of Planned Behavior and the characteristics of tendentious information. To this end, confirmatory factor and model fitting analyses were conducted to develop a tendentious information dissemination mechanism model, which we validated through testing and comparative experiments. Path analysis revealed that Attitude Toward Dissemination, Information Dissemination Intention, and Information Dissemination Behavior are the main links in the information dissemination process. Moreover, Information Sentiment Orientation was found to strongly promote the dissemination of tendentious information, while Subject Norm of Dissemination had a minor inhibiting effect.