Shadows of Deception: Unveiling the Dominance of Source Versus Recipient in the Perceived Credibility of Misinformation

The perceived credibility of misinformation significantly enhances the public’s willingness to re-disseminate the misinformation, leading to severe social and economic consequences. Although previous studies have extensively analyzed how the source of the misinformation and its recipients influence the public's perceived credibility, which aspect has a greater impact remains to be explored. This study focuses on analysing 982 instances of misinformative microblogs, and uses Bayesian Networks to establish an evaluation system for assessing the public’s perceived credibility of their misinformation on the basis of the sources and recipients. The goal of this study is to explore the main aspects and factors that affect the credibility of the public perception of false information. Our findings show that recipients have a more significant influence on perceived credibility than sources. Additionally, the three most important indicators influencing the public’s perceived credibility of misinformation are the activities of the misinformation recipients, the attention duration given by recipients to the misinformation, and the format of the misinformation source. By identifying key factors influencing the public’s perceived credibility of online misinformation, this study can provide targeted guidance for reducing the public’s trust in misinformation.