Role of Socio-demographics on Social Media User Believability and Attitude Towards Veracity of News about Covid-19 Pandemic

Covid-19 is a phenomenon of enormous magnitude and relevance. Since the beginning of this health crisis citizens have been spending more time on social media to get updates about the evolving situation and it is impossible to undermine the possibility of users exposing themselves to fake news. The paper aims to determine to what extent the socio-demographic factors influence the user’s believability towards news and tendency to respond in form of like, comment, and share during pandemic Covid-19.A sample of 234 respondents participated in the online survey administered to test the research model. The questionnaire reliability was measured using Cronbach’s Alpha. Path Analysis and the Correlation Matrix was used to examine the suggested research model. The findings suggest the role of age, gender, educational level, religion, and employment status and the extent to which they influence user believability and tendency to respond. Age and religion were found to be the most significant predictors of user acceptance of social media news and attitude to respond. Also, user believability influences the attitude to respond in a positive direction. This study contributes to society by addressing how the socio-demographics can affect user believability and tendency to respond towards a piece of news during pandemic situations. By applying theories, traditionally researchers have studied the impact of demographic factors that influences user acceptance of news on social media. We attempt to induce a model of how the socio-demographic variables influence the user’s believability and attitude to respond during the Covid-19 pandemic.