Sharing news with online friends: A study of network homophily, network size, and news type

To examine within what kind of social network and with what motivation people tend to share news with their Facebook friends, a 2 (network homophily: high vs. low) x 2 (network size: large vs. small) x 2 (news type: real vs. fake) between-subjects experiment (N = 366) was conducted. The experimental results suggested that network homophily positively influenced news sharing intention, regardless of news type. Furthermore, network size moderated the relationship between network homophily and news sharing intention, but only for real news. Finally, three motivation factors, including socializing, information seeking, and status seeking, were found to be significant mediators to explain this news sharing behavior.