Article

new media & society

2021, Vol. 23(9) 2516–2533
Telling lies together? Sharing ª The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
news as a form sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1461444820931017
of social authentication journals.sagepub.com/home/nms

Barui K Waruwu
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Edson C Tandoc Jr
Andrew Duffy
Nuri Kim
Rich Ling
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Abstract
The increasingly assertive position of social media as a news source means that news
audiences can no longer depend on traditional journalists for information verification.
Instead, they must determine the news credibility on their own. The majority of infor-
mation credibility studies have considered news audiences’ information evaluation as a
purely cognitive endeavor, implying that individuals can arrive at valid information without
social validation. By drawing on self-categorization theory, this article re-conceptualizes
audiences’ acts of news authentication by considering it not as a one-off activity under the
uncontested control of the individual, but as a cycle of collective authentication strategies
whereby individual authentication and social validation are entangled in the context-
dependent processing of social news. To do this, we unpacked the social dimension of
news authentication by looking at the social motivation, strategies, as well as the conse-
quences that support it through a series of focus group discussions in Singapore.

Keywords
Audiences’ acts of authentication, fake news, information credibility, news sharing, self-
categorization theory, social media news

Corresponding author:
Barui K Waruwu, Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong, Run Run Shaw
Creative Media Center, M5102, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong.
Email: lbkwaruwu2-c@my.cityu.edu.hk
Waruwu et al. 2517

Social media has grown to be a popular platform where people share news to help
maintain group cohesion (Goh et al., 2017). Unfortunately, the very characteristics
of news that make it worth sharing are also mimicked by fake news on social media.
This makes social media a fertile ground for the spread of disinformation. The
weakening of institutional gatekeeping for information production and dissemination
online also means that non-authenticated forms of information circulate nearly
uncontested, leaving audience themselves as the final, if not the only, arbiter of
truth.
The deleterious effects of fake news on democracy and electoral behaviors are well-
documented (Bakir and McStay, 2018; Creech and Roessner, 2019). However, in the
age of social media, fake news thrives not only because of the automated tools that
amplify polarized dialogues but also because it is personally shared among social
groups (Kang et al., 2011). Therefore, a social approach to understanding the spread of
disinformation within one’s social circle is of timely significance. News sharing on
social media is a strategic act to preserve group solidarity because it helps maintain
social contact (Goh et al., 2017). If sharing news solidifies social relationships, then
sharing the news that the recipients recognizes as fake can potentially corrode the
cohesion and spoil the sender’s reputation (Duffy et al., 2020). Avoiding this, then,
should be a powerful motivation to authenticate news before offering it to the group.
But another implication of such a group process is that the audience might be less likely
to authenticate information unless it threatens group cohesion by violating in-group
beliefs (Lazer et al., 2018).
The ways news audiences judge news content are also far from being purely
evidence-based processes. People tend to believe information produced by trusted
others (Turcotte et al., 2015), suggesting that news processing is a social and nor-
mative endeavor. Such processing can explain the tenacity of fake news effects on
social networks, even after the fake news has been debunked and discredited
(Thorson, 2016).
This study investigates the implications of group norms on users’ verification
behaviors in the online news environment. Specifically, we draw on self-categorization
theory (Turner, 1985) to explicate the entanglement between individual information
processing and collective cognition in the social process of news authentication. This is
consistent with the assumption that “it is not true that human information processing is
purely individual, private, asocial and non-normative” (Turner et al., 1994: 461) and that
“the validity of information is (psychologically) established by in-group norms” (Turner,
1991: 171).
We argue that audiences’ motivation and strategies to authenticate news shared with
them on social media should be seen as collective acts, guided by in-group norms and
aimed at maintaining group cohesion. We establish this framework of news authenti-
cation as a collective process through five focus group discussions (FGDs) involving 30
news consumers in Singapore, a small nation marked by high levels of the Internet,
mobile phone, and social media use. We investigated the influence of group membership
and norms on motivations to authenticate news, how and to what extent people carry out
the authentication, as well as the consequences of social reactions to their subsequent
authentication practices and group cohesion.
2518 new media & society 23(9)

Literature review
Credibility studies
News credibility is at the core of journalists’ occupational ethics. Tuchman (1972) wrote
about objective reporting of verifiable facts as a defensive mechanism for journalists to
avoid personal and organizational dangers associated with news reporting. In the past,
when access to the means of mass communication was limited, only those with recog-
nized credibility were given the privilege to say something to a wide audience. As such,
audience members of traditional news relied on a centralized institutional verification of
public information.
The rise of web-based information platforms has led to the disintegration of
organizational logics in credibility evaluation as anybody with Internet access can, at
least theoretically, create public information (Tandoc et al., 2018). The abundance of
information online, verified or otherwise, makes information assessment complicated.
The literature of credibility studies has identified the credibility assessment strategies,
focusing on the individual assessment of source, message, and media (Appelman and
Sundar, 2016; Kiousis, 2001). However, in social media ecology, these credibility
cues are affected by social cues accompanying the news. A good example is in terms
of source reputation. When a piece of news from a questionable source is shared by a
trustworthy in-group member on social media, the effects of source reputation become
convoluted because the act of sharing by the trusted friend itself may be taken as an
act of endorsement, thus obscuring the reputation of the original source (Metzger
et al., 2010).
Other than source, message and channel are also key indicators in information
evaluation (Appelman and Sundar, 2016). The issue with this approach is it assumes
everybody has equal cognitive motivation to perform a systematic evaluation. How-
ever, the motivation to assess information credibility is not straightforward and people
may have varying degrees of motivation and resources to perform it. For example,
news audience tend to verify information only if there are clear rewards for doing so
(Lazer et al., 2018). Similarly, Menchen-Trevino and Hargittai (2011) found that
college students tend to verify Wikipedia articles only if they believe that doing so
affects their grades. Otherwise, they do not verify the information regardless of the
message characteristics itself. This suggests that the motivation to assess information
credibility is shaped by social factors, such as rewards and status. Understanding this
social motivation is important because it determines if users even consider the other
credibility cues.
In order to examine the rationales underpinning various authentication behaviors, this
study considers news authentication as a social practice and as such, the motivation,
strategies, and implications of the practice are likely to be conditioned by various social
factors. The findings from past credibility studies on information credibility cues
including source, message, and media are valuable, but they must be considered within
the social contexts in which the users collectively handle the information. For this, we
turn to self-categorization theory, which seeks to explain how individuals make sense of
social reality.
Waruwu et al. 2519

Self-categorization theory
Self-categorization theory is a theoretical offshoot of social identity theory, referring
specifically to the processes by which individuals identify themselves as belonging to a
certain social group based on the similarities in their values and attitudes (Abrams and
Hogg, 1990; Turner, 1985). How individuals cognitively process social information,
such as news, is “a function of context-dependent self-categorization” (Turner et al.,
1994: 461). Consequently, how we learn about our social realities, including how we
think about certain people or things, depends on the extent to which we believe that our
in-group members would hold relatively similar views as we do. Self-categorization
theory has been used to explain the interdependence of individual psychological and
social processes in the contexts of persuasion (Wyer, 2010), binge-drinking among
college students (Johnston and White, 2003), and media representation of racial minority
(Mastro and Kopacz, 2006).
Self-categorization theory challenges the early dominant models of social learning
characterized by the duality of information processing. For example, Festinger (1950)
posited that to obtain subjective validity, that is, the confidence that one’s belief and
attitude toward information are correct and appropriate, one can test the belief through
either physical or social reality testing. The former involves using an objective means of
verification, such as using a thermometer to measure temperature. In contrast, social
reality testing is done when objective measurement is difficult or impossible. For
example, objective verification of information about women being forced into arranged
marriages in India is impractical to most people. Therefore, to evaluate this information,
one must rely on consensual validation from in-group others: if others believe this
information is true, then one can use that collective agreement to claim subjective
validity. This duality in information processing is also seen in the classic normative-
informational models of influence (Deutsch and Gerard, 1955). Whereas normative
influence is considered superficial as it is accepted to obtain rewards from socially
valued peers or authority, informational influence is considered the “true influence”
because it is based on the logical assessment of the message and leads to lasting attitude
change. The majority of credibility studies have conceptualized information processing
as an either-or process while emphasizing on how individual users process information,
isolated from social contexts (Metzger et al., 2010).
These approaches are problematic not because they are unable to explain information
behaviors and influence, but because they regard the two mechanisms of influence and
information processing as alternatives (Turner, 1991). These models imply that subjective
validity can be achieved purely through informational, cognitively sophisticated ver-
ification (i.e. physical reality testing and informational influence), without the need for
consensual validation or conformation to social norms. In contrast, self-categorization
theory considers informational and normative influences as “interdependent phases of
social cognition” (Turner, 1991: 152). It traces the connection between self-categorization
and information processing to the interplay between in-group norms and subjective
validity. Individual information processing is akin to Festinger’s (1950) idea of reality
testing, and normative influence can be seen as social validation. They are inseparable
because individual processing is unable to provide subjective validity without consensual
2520 new media & society 23(9)

validation. In other words, while people are free to process information however they wish,
unless they can be sure that at least part of the group will reproduce the results, they will
still face uncertainty. This important role of social validation can be seen in subsequent
work on how individuals validate news online.

Audiences’ acts of authentication

The growing popularity of social media as information sources has prompted social
perspectives in understanding information evaluation, particularly the interplay between
individual credibility assessment and social membership. Metzger et al. (2010) found
evidence of social force at play in web users’ information evaluation, contradicting the
conventional, but impractical idea of solitary and systematic means of information eva-
luation. Their study found that web users rely on collective intelligence and social-based
heuristics when judging online information to “minimize cognitive effort and mitigate
time pressures through the use of heuristics” (p. 34). Similarly, Flanagin et al. (2014)
discovered that web users tend to have favorable attitude toward online information
produced by people similar to them, suggesting the effects of group membership on
perceived information credibility. These studies illustrate the importance of incorporating
a social perspective in understanding information evaluation in the online environment.
In the specific context of social media news, Tandoc et al., (2018) advanced a con-
ceptual framework to examine users’ authentication behaviors. The 3As (Audiences’
Acts of Authentication) model proposes that audiences evaluate news credibility in two
phases: internal and external. Internally, individuals authenticate news using their
instinct (self), judging the believability of the story (message), legitimacy of the news
producer (source), and social cues (popularity). Audiences move to the external (social)
means of authentication when “the initial encounter still leaves doubts on the authen-
ticity of the news message” (p. 2755).
The 3As model incorporates the social aspects of news authentication. When an
individual sends out news to their social groups after personally judging that it is real, the
recipients might still challenge its authenticity. This creates uncertainty within the group
because it disconfirms the expectation for in-group agreement (Turner, 1991). Self-
categorization theory holds that this uncertainty arising from disagreement among
people who are normatively expected to agree mediates social learning. However, if the
sharer believes that the news is real and receives no challenge from the recipients, the
sharer takes this as behavioral confirmation on the soundness of their authentication
techniques, which then feeds back to the internal authentication by reaffirming its
validity, regardless of whether or not the news was real.

Theoretical synthesis
Examining how individual users authenticate news within the social media ecology is
particularly important given that news consumption is quickly shifting into these plat-
forms, exposing users to both real and fake news. Most credibility studies have inves-
tigated the evaluation of general information online, emphasizing individual’s
systematic cognitive efforts to discern quality information including source and message
Waruwu et al. 2521

credibility. Building on this literature, the 3As model narrowed down the focus to
individual’s evaluation of online news, proposing the internal-external model of news
authentication. However, given the social characteristics of news consumptions on social
media, we also need to expand the focus from individual level of news authentication
that has dominated credibility studies to the social processes involved in news authen-
tication. In other words, we need to investigate the interplay between individual and
social cognition in the evaluation of social media news. Drawing on self-categorization
theory, we argue that just like any other forms of social learning, individuals must
obtain subjective validity on their news evaluation. This makes their news evaluation
inseparable from the dominant norms of the groups to which they self-identify as
belonging. Consequently, their motivation to adopt certain authentication strategies,
the degree of their commitment to the authentication acts, and the consequences of
such decisions are likely to be conditioned by group norms. Therefore, this study asks:

RQ1. What motivations shape news authentication behaviors?

RQ2. How do individuals engage in social validation of news?
RQ3. How does social validation of news affect group cohesion?

Method
This study is part of a larger research project to investigate changing news consumption
practices following the digitalization of news media. The materials analyzed here came
from five FGDs involving 30 social media users in Singapore. The respondents were
recruited using referrals, starting with a core group of respondents recruited from a
large university in Singapore (e.g. non-communication students and non-academic
administrative staff). Many of the respondents then invited their friends from out-
side the university, which made the group discussions conducive for broaching the
issues of collective authentication of social media news. News habits have been shown
to vary across age groups; therefore, we purposefully recruited respondents based on
age categories and conducted the FGDs within each age group: 18–32 (N ¼ 8), 33–47
(N ¼ 8), 48–66 (N ¼ 9), above 66 (N ¼ 5). As a token of appreciation, each respondent
received US$35 at the end of the session.
The sessions were conducted in English, although many respondents replied using a
local variation, known as Singlish. The FGDs started by broaching the respondents’ news
routines including how, where, and when they obtain news. It then proceeded to the topic
of news sharing, revealing the position of news in the respondents’ social life. Inter-
estingly, the respondents were usually the ones who raised the issue of fake news in
social media. The respondents were then asked about their perception of news credibility
and how they determine the authenticity of the news they receive. Finally, the discussion
moved to the consequences of sharing news that the recipient called out to be fake, a
topic that eventually revealed how the responses from the recipient affect the sender’s
subsequent authentication motivation and strategies. The chosen method of FGDs
allowed the respondents to pick up on each other’s and generated a good number of
examples of fake news. This also helped the respondents recall the specific reactions to
false information they have sent or received in the past.
2522 new media & society 23(9)

The discussions averaged an hour long and were video recorded for verbatim tran-
scription. The analysis started with two coders reading the transcripts several times to
obtain a general sense of the narratives that unfolded during the discussion. Each coder
then made personal notes which were coded and categorized gradually into thematic
concepts as the coders constantly compared new codes with existing ones (Glaser, 1965).
Each week, the two coders were joined by the rest of the researchers to discuss the
emerging themes and sharpen the conceptual coherence.
Analytically, several codes including “interpersonal” and “incidental” authentication
were drawn from existing literature. These concepts guided the initial analysis akin to
open coding (Corbin and Strauss, 2008) when researchers made sense of the common
comments such as “I just ask my friends” and “the next day I found out it’s fake.” The
core categories, however, were formed based on the inductive analysis of the initial
codes which revealed the feedback loop in the authentication strategies. On this stage,
the central concept of “social authentication” emerged. For privacy reasons, all names
indicated here are pseudonyms.

Findings
The central theme that emerged from the analysis was that news authentication is not an
entirely solitary, cognition-driven, and evidence-based process, but a strategic act of
information processing that is rooted in the respondents’ self-categorization. Specifi-
cally, the respondents’ membership status in various social groups influenced their
motivation (and lack thereof) and strategies to authenticate news. The strategies are
centered around the use of social cues and group knowledge to assess news credibility.
These cues are often communicated during the process of news sharing. Social norms
also affect the consequences of authentication behaviors, as well as how they respond to
these consequences.

Social motivations for news authentication

When it comes to authentication, all news is not created equal. Respondents were more
likely to verify social media news that had impact on themselves and their social rela-
tionships. Two specific motivations for news authentication were identified: maintaining
self-image and preserving group cohesion.

Maintaining self-mage. Most respondents talked about their authentication practices as

being devoted to protecting their positive self-image as they understood the detrimental
impacts of sharing fake news on their reputation. Several respondents talked about their
experiences when their news offering was discredited by the recipients, making them
feel embarrassed, silly, and incompetent. Avoiding these adverse effects of sharing fake
news is a powerful motivation to scrutinize the authenticity of any news they wish to
share.
One respondent, Aaron, updates his friends overseas on local news regularly to stay in
touch, a practice that has earned him a reputation of a news savvy among his friends. To
safeguard his trustworthiness, he assures that the news he offers has been carefully
Waruwu et al. 2523

appraised for authenticity: “Those are not fake news. You lose credibility yourself if you
send out rubbish.”
Another respondent, Darriel, confessed to having made a mistake in the past by
forwarding to his WhatsApp group a link that he had received. One of his friends quickly
called it out as a scam. When asked to describe how he felt about the incident, he said:
“Of course I felt silly. Really stupid me.” From then on, he made it his business to ensure
the news he forwards is credible to avoid the same social peril. “So now I am a bit
cautious, I don’t share news until I verify it.” The following quote from Christy also
illustrates the intense impact of social reaction to sharing fake news on personal
reputation:
I have got an intelligent friend in my church, and I sent him something. He told me off. He
says, because I am one of the elderly in the church, he calls me Aunty Christy: “Aunty
Christy, this is not right, check!”

These comments highlight the social motivation behind authentication behaviors. The
respondents understood that by sharing news, they become vulnerable to social judg-
ment. When the news is of questionable technical quality, such as a scam or virus-
carrying link masked as sensational news, the adverse response can harm the sender’s
self-image because it shows they were not thoughtful and responsible enough to click the
link themselves before forwarding it.

Preserving group cohesion. The second motivation to authenticate news is concerned with
maintaining social cohesion. The respondents considered authentication as a way of
protecting their community from the hazards of disinformation. A respondent, Nancy,
advocated critical thinking when it comes to unverified news that may negatively impact
the well-being of her social groups:
It’s good to keep your ears open, but if no real way to verify [the news], take it with a pinch
of salt. But if you know it affects certain groups of people, affects you, affects your children
and your family, then you must wake up to it.

Nancy’s call to “wake up” to fake news stems from her awareness of the danger of
unverified news to her social groups as disinformation may corrode group cohesion thus
undermining the group’s collective well-being. This motivation might coalesce with her
intention to show care to her loved ones. However, to her, being critical of news is also a
way to contribute to the preservation of her groups cohesion that may be endangered by
fake news.
Verifying the news before sharing it was also a way of showing respect to the reci-
pients. Since news sharing is central to the maintenance of social bonds, authentication
becomes a moral obligation crucial to the practice of group-based news sharing. To most
respondents, it is sometimes wiser not to share news rather than being accused of taking
part in the spreading of fake news. A female respondent, Celine, said “If I have the time I
double-check, if not I just don’t send. I will just delete it.”
The way group cohesion motivates news authentication is likely to be a consequence
of news utility as a gift (Duffy and Ling, 2020). News sharing can be seen as a symbolic
act of gifting and authentication acts communicate the sharer’s commitment to
2524 new media & society 23(9)

presenting only gifts of excellent quality. Sharing fake news is tantamount to bringing
stale bread to a housewarming party: instead of expressing one’s thoughtfulness, it
undermines the relationship with the recipient. This motivates the respondents to
authenticate their news offerings because the authentication acts increase their confi-
dence in their news contribution and maximize the chance of reciprocity.

Not motivated to authenticate news. When analyzing how the maintenance of self-image
and group cohesion work as the motivation to authenticate news, it became apparent that
insofar as the cohesive goal is achieved, or at the very least not threatened by the news,
the respondents were not motivated to verify the news. In this case, the news is con-
sidered socially innocuous. There are, however, two conditions necessary to ensure that
eschewing authentication does not jeopardize self-image and group cohesion.
First, the audience must have a tacit understanding of the goals and ideological
standards of the specific groups with which they share the news. The respondents said
that they are members of multiple chat groups including family, church friends,
neighbors, schoolmates, and colleagues. These different groups have different goals and
ideological standards of information credibility which guide both the selection of news
to share and whether the news should be verified beforehand. By sharing only news that
conforms to the specific group’s ideology, sharers can expect consensual validation,
regardless of whether the information had been rigorously verified. The role of group
ideology on selective sharing can be seen in the following conversation between the
interviewer and Freddy, a respondent working as a portfolio manager:

Freddy: For example, if there was news about some Muslim who converted to
Christianity for instance, and why he converted, I will share that with
my Christian group.
Interviewer: With that group?
Freddy: Yeah, that particular group.
Interviewer: But then you might have a financial group . . .
Freddy: Financial group I won’t share. I will share only the financial
news.

News about a convert to Christianity is good news to a church chatgroup because it

conforms with the group’s ideology and as such, Freddy can expect immediate approval
of the news from his church friends. On the other hand, a chatgroup consisting of
colleagues, such as Freddy’s chatgroup of financial executives, expects the news to have
been critically verified because this type of group is affected professionally by current
news. Seen in this light, the news about a recent convert and news about the financial
markets are different in terms of their authentication-worthiness. However, this distinc-
tion is not inherent in the news stories themselves. They assume distinct characteristics
(whether they should be verified) based on the recipients’ goals and ideological stan-
dards. In other words, the distinctness of these news pieces arises out of the ideological
contexts of the groups with which one wishes to share them, a testament to the influence
of self-categorization on collective information processing.
Waruwu et al. 2525

Second, the sharers and recipients must share an understanding of the symbolic value
of the news. The respondents skip authentication when they believed that the benevolent
intention behind their news offering outweighs its informational utility. This was
common among the respondents who shared news for comedic purposes such as Mila, a
respondent who enjoyed sharing funny news with her relatives “without thinking”
because regardless of its authenticity, the news was only meant to entertain:
It is not necessarily[fake], it is just funny news. I let to send funny things to my family,
especially my son-in-law, he works in Saudi Arabia, I think he needs to be entertained.

A respondent, Franky, forwarded the news he found online about the crime in Malaysia
to warn his relative traveling there. He said,
Even though it may be fake, but at least we say: “Hey, have you seen this?” Just to alert them
and just pass on without any real intention. Because we need to alert.

Arguably, corroborating the information about the crime rate in Malaysia would be
impractical to Franky. However, he believed that his intention to warn his relative
communicated his thoughtfulness and, therefore, diminished his concern about the vera-
city of the information. In the discussions, various forms of questionable news were
mentioned, ranging from bizarre diets in China to government conspiracies in Malaysia.
These types of social knowledge tenaciously thrive in social circles because the news,
regardless of its veracity, may not pose any risk to the cohesion of certain groups, and as
such, do not always warrant critical evaluation.

Strategies of collective authentication

The social normativity of news authentication also showed in the strategies used by
respondents to validate the authenticity of social media news. The respondents evaluated
the news by referring to their stereotypic worldview about the news actors, affiliation
with the source, as well as social comparison with others mediated by reciprocal news
sharing.

Using stereotypic worldview. The respondents often utilized group knowledge as the
framework to assess the believability of a news story. A photo-elicitation question was
included in the FGDs, where the respondents looked at screenshots of what looked like
news articles. When one respondent, Rita, saw the news article about a Chinese man
getting arrested in New York City for selling hot dogs with real dog meat, she judged it
as credible because she had heard from her friends that dog meat was indeed a delicacy in
China. She said, “I think it is a real one, I heard Chinese from China, they like to eat
dog.” Another respondent, Franky, talked about a news report on a wanted girl in
Australia who was arrested after she had requested a more attractive mugshot in the
Sydney Police’s Facebook post about her. Having heard the good reputation of Aus-
tralian police authority, Franky dismissed the news as fake because he did not believe
such an event could happen under the watch of Australian law enforcement. He said, “I
trust Sydney. I interpret in this way: I trust the authorities have done a good job, so this
thing shouldn’t happen.” The news, however, was actually authentic.
2526 new media & society 23(9)

In both instances, the respondents used internalized in-group knowledge as measures

to construct a realm of plausibility: whether it is possible that certain events happen to a
certain set of actors under certain circumstances. As Rita said, she had learned from her
friends what she knew about the Chinese people’s unusual diet and used it to claim
subjective validity for her verdict that the news, which was actually fake, is authentic.
Simply put, to Rita, the news “makes sense.” Although this strategy is convenient, it may
lead to the persistence of stereotypic views of out-group others as it is much easier to
believe fake news that conforms to one’s preconceptions rather than to problematize
group knowledge.

Relying on affiliation with the source. The source is also part of the audiences’ authentication
framings. Several respondents “followed” the Facebook accounts of legacy news media
such as CNN and the Strait Times. The news from these sources generally received a
positive credibility stamp. When asked about whether fake news eroded their trust in the
news media in general, a respondent, Freddy, replied, “I don’t think so. I think the Straits
Times has been with us for decades.”
The respondents reported the challenge of authenticating news from a source with
which they are not familiar. One respondent was outright confident the news he saw
was fake simply because he did not believe there was a newspaper called The
Sydney Morning Herald. It is, however, a real news outlet in Australia. When the
respondents are not familiar with the original source, they looked to the people who
have shared or commented on the news and take them as the source. A respondent,
Rossa, relies on the comment section to determine news authenticity because she
trusts that if the news is fake, somebody would call it out. “The fake news I read
was about celebrity gossips on Yahoo. It was questionable and I saw the comments
and it turned out to be fake news.”
Interpersonal contexts influence the perceived credibility of social media news as
evident in the audience’s tendency to trust news endorsed by trusted contacts (Turcotte
et al., 2015). Our analysis further confirmed this. When our respondents had limited
resources to personally assess source credibility, either because of a lack of knowledge or
missing source credibility cues, the brand legitimacy of the original source moves to the
background, replaced by the familiarity and trust between them and the people who have
interacted with the news.

Sharing is authenticating. The respondents also authenticated news with the help of
friends and family. The most popular platform used to share news among the
respondents is WhatsApp, which is also where most of the collective authentication
takes place.
Interestingly, the respondents did not explicitly ask for help to verify the news.
Instead, there seemed to be an underlying moral obligation to help each other evaluate
the news that circulated in their groups. A respondent, Harry, decided to share suspicious
video footage with his brother, not only because the video content was intriguing, but
also because he believed that his brother would tell him if the video was real, even if he
did not specifically ask for verification. The video turned out to be fake:
Waruwu et al. 2527

Interviewer: So how did you feel when you got that? Do you feel embarrassed that
you sent something like that?
Harry: No, not really. I just send it to him to verify, because I have no way to
verify, but for him it’s easier because he’s involved in those, so he
knows that . . .
Harry: But you suspected that it was fake, so you ask him to verify?
Respondent: I didn’t ask him. I just send it to him knowing that he will respond to
me when he checks his phone.

Another respondent, Celine, said she knew about fact-checking services. However, she
did not always have the time to verify the news she wished to share. Not letting her
concern about fake news deter her from carrying out her social duties of sharing news,
she chose to send out a disclaimer to accompany her news offering:

Celine: I send the link, it is okay. But, sometimes I say, I didn’t verify, please
verify. So now I accompany with, “please verify.”
Interviewer: So, you might send something out before you go through the whole . . .
Celine: Yeah, I said, this has come to me, I am sorry I don’t have the time, so
please verify.

Beyond the cohesive functions of news sharing, we found that this practice often coa-
lesces with acts of authentication. The respondents did not need to overtly ask for a favor
to verify the news, suggesting the existence of a nuanced expectation among group
members not only to regularly share news with each other but to collectively verify it
as well. This works for the benefit of the group because when the group has a mutual
understanding of the sharer’s intention, the reaction from the recipient, whether con-
firming or discrediting the news, is taken as an expression of commitment to the rela-
tionship, rather than a reprimand.
One way to understand how this works is by looking at both reciprocal news sharing
and authentication acts as overlapping parts of social reality testing (Festinger, 1950) by
comparing one’s opinion and attitude toward the news with other people’s. People share
news in order to see what other people think about it, thus engaging in social comparison
to obtain subjective validity (Turner, 1991). The responses to the news serve as com-
parative information that validates the sharer’s attitude and perception toward the news.
If the recipients agree that the news is authentic, the sharer takes the agreement as
evidence of the soundness of their initial judgment. If the recipients disagree with the
news authenticity, the disconfirmation of the expectation to agree creates uncertainty
that modifies the sharer’s future behavior. Several respondents took this disagreement
discouragingly and stopped sharing news completely. On a more positive note, however,
the majority of the respondents took this disagreement as an opportunity to recalibrate
their authentication mechanism, for example, by adding fact-checking services to their
repertoire of authentication tools.
2528 new media & society 23(9)

This further crystallizes the social aspects of news authentication. Here, news cred-
ibility assessment is not a solitary endeavor entirely dictated by the individual cognitive
parameters. Instead, the news audience act as members of a social group when pro-
cessing the news. This was evident in how the respondents used the group worldview to
determine the story plausibility and how they responded to the social reaction from the
in-group others.

Social consequences of news authentication

The social nature of news authentication also manifested in the consequences of helping
each other identify fake news. Collective authentication benefits group cohesion by
promoting social interdependence among group members and creating a ritual of social
processing of news.

Institutionalization of informational interdependence. The mutual expectation of collective

authentication may strengthen social bonds because it reinforces informational inter-
dependence among group members. We found that the more intimate the group is, the
more dependent they are on each other. Several respondents said that when they did not
have time to read the news, they simply asked their friends for a summary. An explicit
request for help to authenticate news is often unnecessary, suggesting the taken-for-
grantedness of interpersonal trust and reliance between respondents and their peers. A
respondent, David, spoke about a friend in his chat group who had a reputation as the
“information police.” Instead of using fact-checking sites, David sent the news to the
group and trusted that the colleague would help tell him if it is fake:
Oh, I have heard of it [the fact-checking site] but I have not really used it. But anyway, in the
chat groups I have, of course almost every group would have some “policeman” and some
“watchman.” Eh, this is fake news, and alert us. So, after a few times, we are more sensible.

After several instances of collective authentication, David and his friends began to
develop news sensibility of their own. The trust and dependency on the group’s
“policeman” helped them refine their own internal authentication framings. This even-
tually allowed them to assess their subsequent news offerings in ways that are more
closely aligned to the group norms and standards, thus reaffirming their group member-
ship. Social processing of news thus helps maintain individual roles within the group,
such as the entertainer or the policeman described above, which contribute to cohesion
by tacitly acknowledging the varied functions of members. Sharing news to be verified
by a group member is a form of gift that allows that member to reiterate their status and
value to the group.
The respondents were also more likely to perceive systematic authentication, such as
the use of fact-checking services, as imperative if the influence comes from their in-
group friends. The majority of respondents who have developed the habit of verifying
news before sending it out were urged to do so after a mishap. They talked about how
they updated their mental list of authenticity cues after their initial strategies failed to
accurately judge news credibility. For example, Franky said,
Waruwu et al. 2529

After one or two bad incidents, that the news happened to be fake, now I will test through
this one website that you can check. I can’t remember the name now, but you can send it and
they will verify whether the news is fake or not. So, I will verify, I will be more cautious
rather than sending it away.

Franky’s conformity to integrate a fact-checking service into his authentication might

have resulted from purely logical considerations. However, he accepted the influence not
only because he believed that the people who corrected him had credibility, but also
because their opinions matter. Thus, cohesion is not only the result of collective authen-
tication but also a precondition. Collective authentication might enhance cohesion only
between those who already share affinity with each other because underlying trust and
solidarity preclude any types of social dependencies.

Ritualization of collective authentication. Collective authentication generates feelings of

solidarity when it is transformed into a ritual of news processing among group members.
Our respondents frequently specified WhatsApp chatgroups as their primary source of
social updates. The following conversation highlighted the ritualization of authentication
in WhatsApp chatgroups:
Liam: I mean, interestingly, on the WhatsApp news, nowadays all of my
friends are alerting each other: “Hey, check it out! Don’t believe.”
Interviewer: So they’re not sending news, they’re sending warnings.
Liam: No, no! First an article, then somebody that is alert says I don’t think
that’s true. Don’t believe until you check it out. So now we are in that
mind, we don’t totally believe news anymore, 100%.
In these groups, there appears to be a clear understanding of the norms and standards that
set them apart from other chat groups. These characteristics were shown to be crucial in
the performance of the authentication ritual.
The respondents said they could expect two to three news articles a day from their
chatgroups, a small percentage of the total stream of messages in the groups as the
majority is made up of “chit chat.” This banter contributes to group cohesion by
enhancing the member’s ability to orient their daily activities. Shared news also helps
centralize members’ attention and focus the conversation, if momentarily, thus fueling
mediated social interaction devoted to processing the news. A respondent, Rose, said,
There is something about fake news, we all have the skills to verify. I usually Google search
it and read forum. What I can draw conclusion is the authenticity according to facts provided
by netizens and all. In fact, it contributes to good small-talk among colleagues and all.

Discussion
While dominant theorizing on news authentication behaviors has focused on individual
processes, this study argues that news authentication should be understood as a collective
endeavor. Through FGDs conducted in Singapore, a country known for ubiquitous
online connectivity, we find that the motivations, rituals, and consequences associated
2530 new media & society 23(9)

with news authentication are mostly social. First, the extent to which the news audience
is committed to careful authentication is determined by their intention to preserve group
harmony. Second, the audience often invoked group knowledge and social cues when
assessing news authenticity. Third, news authentication rituals can enhance feelings of
solidarity by solidifying the dependency among group members for socially valid
information and allowing for the expression of mutual commitment to the relationship.
Fourth, when news is shared, authenticated or otherwise, there is a social consequence
that influences the social relationships and subsequent news authentication behaviors.
Taken together, these findings suggest that self-categorization shapes group member-
ships which in turn impose important parameters that define news authentication
behaviors on social media.
One of the key findings in this study is the social motivations that shape news
authentication behaviors. Equally interesting, however, are the cases where news
audiences collectively lack the motivation to verify news. Specifically, if the news
echoes the recipients’ group ideology, the motivation to verify it weakens due to the
expectation for consensual agreement. Consequently, the information circulating in a
group may strengthen the group’s solidarity while possibly reinforcing social stigma and
prejudice against out-group others, especially if the news sees out-group others in a
negative light. This was the case of Rita, the respondent who heard that people in China
enjoy dog meat, and inferred therefrom that Chinese food products are not to be trusted.
Indeed, behaviors driven by individuals’ self-categorization may validate the sense of
belonging in the group, but often at the expense of fair representation and attitude toward
non-similar others (Mastro and Kopacz, 2006).
While the findings of this study are illuminating, there are also several limitations.
First, this exploratory study is based on FGDs involving 30 individuals, and while we
made sure that we involved individuals from a range of generations, future studies can
expand what we started here by involving more participants. For example, we excluded
those below 21 years old primarily due to the limitations set by our institutional review
board, but we also acknowledge that adolescents and young adults are heavy social
media users and belong to social groups that form and function differently from those of
older people. Future research can investigate how youth digital culture affects adoles-
cents’ and young adults’ authentication behaviors. Second, we focused on Singapore, a
small country with high levels of Internet and social media use. Future studies can build
on our results to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the social aspects of
news authentication by conducting similar studies in other media contexts.
The dominant approach in credibility studies has been effective in describing web
users’ individual assessments of the quality of the information they gather online. The
chief shortcoming of this approach is the assumption that it is possible to obtain sub-
jective validity without social validation. It implies that information carries credibility in
and of itself, waiting to be discovered. In contrast, self-categorization theory holds that
information credibility arises as a result of a socially validated process of thinking. The
main motivation to authenticate news is to obtain subjective validity, which necessarily
requires consensual validation from other people.
We do not argue that internal authentication cannot lead to subjective validity. Social
validation can be achieved through either behavioral or perceptual confirmation (Turner,
Waruwu et al. 2531

1991). Behavioral confirmation occurs when an individual directly receives social

feedback on their news offering, as in the case of those who share or talk about the news.
Perceptual confirmation, on the other hand, occurs when the individual believes that the
categories they have used to assess a certain news story had been socially validated and
the result is not idiosyncratic, in that at least part of the group is likely to reproduce the
conclusion (Turner et al., 1994). This is possible because the group norms that govern
categorization, the way we understand people and things around us, are not only
descriptive but also prescriptive: they outline how socially capable members should
think and behave (Abrams and Hogg, 1990). By adhering to these socially approved
ways of thinking, each member can obtain social validation on their individual cognition
even in a physical isolation. One implication is when the recipients recognize the news as
fake but decide not to call it out to avoid hurting the sharer’s feeling, they may inad-
vertently declare their agreement and validate the sharer’s defective authentication
mechanism.
Conceptualizing news authentication as a social process has important practical and
theoretical implications. First, it recontextualizes the problem of fake news as well as the
interventions to address it. Fact-checking initiatives should be aimed not just at indi-
vidual users because debunking fake news is a collective effort. How do we then
incentivize those who recognize fake news to engage in proactive correction within their
social groups even if the news violates the group’s dominant belief system? Second,
studies testing factors that make individuals susceptible to believing fake news should
also account for social contexts.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by a Tier 2 Grant
from the Ministry of Education, Singapore, under the grant number MOE2015-T2-1-
042.

ORCID iDs
Barui K Waruwu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4281-8866
Edson C Tandoc Jr https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8740-9313

References
Abrams D and Hogg MA (1990) Social Identification, Self-Categorization and Social Influence.
European Review of Social Psychology 1(1): 195–228.
Appelman A and Sundar SS (2016) Measuring message credibility: construction and validation of
an exclusive scale. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 93(1): 59–79.
Bakir V and McStay A (2018) Fake news and the economy of emotions: problems, causes,
solutions. Digital Journalism 6(2): 154–175.
Corbin J and Strauss A (2008) Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for
Developing Grounded Theory. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Creech B and Roessner A (2019) Declaring the value of truth: progressive-era lessons for combat-
ting fake news. Journalism Practice 13(3): 263–279.
Deutsch M and Gerard HB (1955) A study of normative and informational social influences upon
individual judgment. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 51: 629–636.
2532 new media & society 23(9)

Duffy A and Ling R (2020) The gift of news: phatic news sharing on social media for social
cohesion. Journalism Studies 21(1): 72–87.
Duffy A, Tandoc E and Ling R (2020) Too good to be true, too good not to share: the social utility
of fake news. Information, Communication and Society 23(13): 1965–1979. DOI: 10.1080/
1369118X.2019.1623904.
Festinger L (1950) Informal social communication. Psychological Review 57(5): 271–282.
Flanagin AJ, Hocevar KP and Samahito SN (2014) Connecting with the user-generated Web: how
group identification impacts online information sharing and evaluation. Information Com-
munication and Society 17(6): 683–694.
Glaser BG (1965) The constant comparative method of qualitative analysis. Social Problems
12(4): 436–445.
Goh D, Ling R, Huang L, et al. (2017) News sharing as reciprocal exchanges in social cohesion
maintenance. Information Communication and Society 22(8): 1128–1144.
Johnston KL and White KM (2003) Binge-drinking: a test of the role of group norms in the theory
of planned behaviour. Psychology and Health 18(1): 63–77.
Kang H, Bae K, Zhang S, et al. (2011) Source cues in online news: is the proximate source more
powerful than distal sources? Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 8(4): 719–736.
Kiousis S (2001) Mass communication and society public trust or mistrust? Perceptions of media
credibility in the information age. Mass Communication and Society 4(4): 381–403.
Lazer DMJ, Baum MA, Benkler Y, et al. (2018) The science of fake news. Science 359(6380):
1094–1096.
Mastro DE and Kopacz MA (2006) Media representations of race, prototypicality, and policy
reasoning: an application of self-categorization theory. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic
Media 50(2): 305–322.
Menchen-Trevino E and Hargittai E (2011) Young adults’ credibility assessment of Wikipedia.
Information Communication and Society 14(1): 24–51.
Metzger MJ, Flanagin AJ and Medders RB (2010) Social and heuristic approaches to credibility
evaluation online. Journal of Communication 60(3): 413–439.
Tandoc EC, Ling R, Westlund O, et al. (2018) Audiences’ acts of authentication in the age of fake
news: a conceptual framework. New Media & Society 20(8): 2745–2763.
Thorson E (2016) Belief echoes: the persistent effects of corrected misinformation. Political
Communication 33(3): 460–480.
Tuchman G (1972) Objectivity as strategic ritual: an examination of newsmen’s notion of objec-
tivity. The American Journal of Sociology 77(4): 660–679.
Turcotte J, York C, Irving J, et al. (2015) News recommendations from social media opinion
leaders: effects on media trust and information seeking. Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication 20(5): 520–535.
Turner JC (1985) Social Categorization and the self concept: a social cognitive theory of group
behavior. Advances in Group Process 2: 77–122.
Turner JC (1991) Social Influence. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.
Turner JC, Oakes PJ, Haslam SA, et al. (1994) Self and collective: cognition and social context.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 20(5): 454–463.
Wyer N (2010) Selective self-categorization: meaningful categorization and the in-group persua-
sion effect. Journal of Social Psychology 150(5): 452–470.

Author biographies
Barui K Waruwu is a PhD candidate in the Department of Media and Communication, City
University of Hong Kong, and was a visiting PhD student at the Wee Kim Wee School of
Waruwu et al. 2533

Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (2019). His

research focuses on the impacts of mobile communication technologies on two areas: the social
processing of information and maintenance of social relationships. His current project investigates
the consequences of smartphone technology on family relationships and identity management
among international migrant workers.

Edson C Tandoc Jr (PhD, University of Missouri) is an associate professor at the Wee Kim Wee
School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His
research focuses on the sociology of message construction in the context of digital journalism. He
has conducted studies on the construction of news and social media messages. His studies about
influences on journalists have focused on the impact of journalistic roles, new technologies, and
audience feedback on the various stages of the news gatekeeping process. This stream of research
has led him to study journalism from the perspective of news consumers as well, investigating how
readers make sense of critical incidents in journalism and take part in reconsidering journalistic
norms; and how changing news consumption patterns facilitate the spread of fake news.
Andrew Duffy (PhD, National University of Singapore) is an assistant professor at the Wee Kim
Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
His research interests include the interface between mobility and the media as it relates to news
journalism, and between the media and mobility as it relates to leisure travel. His current research
focuses on how news is shared on mobile media devices and its effects on society.
Nuri Kim (PhD, Stanford University) is an assistant professor at the Wee Kim Wee School of
Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research
focuses on issues of “difference”—ethnic, national, religious, cultural, and others—in discursive
environments and its implications for mutual understanding and attitudes towards different others.
Rich Ling (PhD, University of Colorado) is the Shaw Foundation professor of Media Technology at
the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological Uni-
versity, Singapore. He has studied the social consequences of mobile communication for the last
two decades.