Exploring News Authentication Processes and Challenges of Social Media Users in Pakistan
Abstract
Abstract Views: 0
The proliferation of disinformation and fake news on social media platforms have emerged as a major challenge, accentuating the role of social media users in news verification. The current study aimed to examine the cognitive processes of media-literate social media users in Pakistan during verification and sharing of news on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter). It also explored the challenges faced by social media users in authenticating news. Tandoc’s Audiences Act of Authentication (AAA) model was applied as conceptual framework to analyze news verification behavior. Therefore, purposive sampling technique was employed to recruit 12 post graduate university students in Lahore. This sampling method was chosen to ensure inclusion of participants with active social media engagement and digital media literacy skills. The study revealed that the AAA model was employed in Pakistani context, adding another extra tier for source verification on Facebook and X. Participants are active social media users who deliberately cross-check news from various sources. They are more involved in intentional and interpersonal steps for news verification rather than waiting for incidental news posts to appear on their timeline. Major challenge in news authentication includes politically-driven news posts in the form of disinformation, lack of credible sources for instant verification, and time constraint in verifying against rapid proliferation of fake news. This research elucidated news verification practices, in a localized context of Lahore from the perspective of AAA model, calling key stakeholders to focus on specialized digital media literacy strategies in order to curb dissemination of misinformation and fake news
Downloads
References
Aïmeur, E., Amri, S., & Brassard, G. (2023). Fake news, disinformation and misinformation in social media: A review. Social Network Analysis and Mining, 13(1), Article e30. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-023-01028-5
Ajina, A. S., Javed, H. M. U., Ali, S., & Zamil, A. M. (2024). Fake or fact news? Investigating users’ online fake news sharing behavior: The moderating role of social networking sites (SNS) dependency. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 40(14), 3607–3621.
Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211–236. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.31.2.211
Aondover, E. M., Yar’Adua, S. M., & Aondover, P. O. (2025). Influence of digital images on the propagation of fake news on Twitter in Russia and Ukraine crisis. Budapest International Research and Critics Institute-Journal, 8(1), 59–74. https://doi.org/10.33258/birci.v8i1.8029
Apuke, O. D., & Omar, B. (2021). User motivation in fake news sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic: An application of the uses and gratification theory. Online Information Review, 45(1), 220–239. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-05-2020-0206
Aufderheide, P. (1993). Media literacy: A report of the national leadership conference on media literacy. Aspen Institute.
Awan, M. Z., Arindawati, W. A., & Rahman, K. A. (2025). Strategic communication by Soch Fact Check against electoral disinformation in Pakistan 2024. Journal of Innovation Research and Knowledge, 5(2), 1481–1488.
Baron, I. Z., & Ish-Shalom, P. (2024). Exploring the threat of fake news: Facts, opinions, and judgement. Political Research Quarterly, 77(2), 620–632. https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129241234839
Barthel, M., Mitchell, A., & Holcomb, J. (2016). Many Americans believe fake news is sowing confusion. Pew Research Center. https://www.journalism.org/2016/12/15/many-americans-believe-fake-news-is-sowing-confusion
Brandtzaeg, P. B., Følstad, A., & Chaparro Domínguez, M. Á. (2018). How journalists and social media users perceive online fact-checking and verification services. Journalism Practice, 12(9), 1109–1129. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2017.1363657
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa
Butt, M. N., Riaz, M., & Rabbani, A. W. (2023). Countering fake news in Pakistan: Challenges faced by newsrooms and regulators. MAIRAJ, 2(2), 79–87. https://doi.org/10.58760/mairaj.v2i2.31
Chadwick, A., Vaccari, C., & Kaiser, J. (2025). The amplification of exaggerated and false news on social media: The roles of platform use, motivations, affect, and ideology. American Behavioral Scientist, 69(2), 113–130. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642221118264
Chan, M. (2024). News literacy, fake news recognition, and authentication behaviors after exposure to fake news on social media. New Media & Society, 26(8), 4669–4688. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221127675
Chan, M., Lee, F. L., & Chen, H. T. (2024). Avoid or authenticate? A multilevel cross-country analysis of the roles of fake news concern and news fatigue on news avoidance and authentication. Digital Journalism, 12(3), 356–375. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.2016060
Chang, C. (2021). Fake news: Audience perceptions and concerted coping strategies. Digital Journalism, 9(5), 636–659. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.1923403
Chen, C. C., & Tao, C. C. (2025). Identity-driven news authentication strategy in echo chambers. Journalism Practice. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2025.2464209
Cherry, S. (2024). Modern armed conflicts: Disinformation campaigns shaping the digital information landscape. The Serials Librarian, 85(1–4), 19–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2024.2348140
Dilshad, R. (2025, May 8). Control room set up to provide accurate info about Punjab govt’s decisions. 24 News. https://24newshd.tv/08-May-2025/control-room-set-up-to-provide-accurate-info-about-punjab-govt-s-decisions
Edgerly, S., Mourão, R. R., Thorson, E., & Tham, S. M. (2020). When do audiences verify? How perceptions about message and source influence audience verification of news headlines. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 97(1), 52–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699019864680
Edwards, R., & Holland, J. (2013). What is qualitative interviewing? Bloomsbury Academic.
Fitzgerald, J., Lokmanoglu, A. D., Salles, D., & Santini, R. M. (2024). Heaven holds a place for those who pray: Instrumentalizing religion and disinformation in the 2022 Brazilian and 2023 Turkish presidential campaigns. The International Journal of Press/Politics. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612241285660
Fleming, J., & Kajimoto, M. (2016). The freedom of critical thinking: Examining efforts to teach American news literacy principles in Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Malaysia. In M. N. Yildiz & J. Keengwe (Eds.), Handbook of research on media literacy in the digital age (pp. 208–235). IGI Global.
Fowler-Watt, K., & McDougall, J. (2019). Media literacy versus fake news: Fact checking and verification in the era of fake news and post-truths. Journalism Education, 8(1), 59–68.
Galvin, M. (2021, July 15). As surgeon general urges whole-of-society effort to fight health misinformation, the work of the National Academies helps foster an evidence-based information environment. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2021/07/as-surgeon-general-urges-whole-of-society-effort-to-fight-health-misinformation-the-work-of-the-national-academies-helps-foster-an-evidence-based-information-environment
Geeng, C., Yee, S., & Roesner, F. (2020, April 25–30). Fake news on Facebook and Twitter: Investigating how people (don’t) investigate [Paper presentation]. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Honolulu, USA.
Gehrke, M., Eggers, J., de Vreese, C., & Hopmann, D. N. (2024). What makes news (seem) authentic on social media? Indicators from a qualitative study of young adults. Digital Journalism. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2024.2399622
Giomelakis, D., Papadopoulou, O., Papadopoulos, S., & Veglis, A. (2023). Verification of news video content: Findings from a study of journalism students. Journalism Practice, 17(5), 1068–1097. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2021.1965905
Godler, Y., & Reich, Z. (2013). How journalists think about facts: Theorizing the social conditions behind epistemological beliefs. Journalism Studies, 14(1), 94–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2012.689489
Gottfried, J., & Shearer, E. (2016). News use across social media platforms. Pew Research Center. http://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2016
Gross, G. (2018, March 21). Fake news spreads fast, but don’t blame the bots. Internet Society. https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2018/03/fake-news-spreads-fast-dont-blame-bots/
Hawkins, I., & Campbell, S. W. (2025). (Fake) news-finds-me: Interactive social and mobile media uses and incidental news reliance as antecedents of fake news-sharing. Computers in Human Behavior, 168, Article e108658. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2024.108658
Hennink, M. M., Kaiser, B. N., & Marconi, V. C. (2017). Code saturation versus meaning saturation: How many interviews are enough? Qualitative Health Research, 27(4), 591–608. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732316665344
Himma-Kadakas, M., & Ojamets, I. (2022). Debunking false information: Investigating journalists’ fact-checking skills. Digital Journalism, 10(5), 866–887. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2022.2043173
Jennings, J., & Stroud, N. J. (2023). Asymmetric adjustment: Partisanship and correcting misinformation on Facebook. New Media & Society, 25(7), 1501–1521. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211021720
Joffee, H. (2011). Thematic analysis. In D. Harper & A. R. Thompson (Eds.), Qualitative research methods in mental health and psychotherapy (pp. 209–223). Wiley.
Johnson, T. J., & Kaye, B. K. (2015). Site effects: How reliance on social media influences confidence in the government and news media. Social Science Computer Review, 33(2), 127–144. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439314525114
Jones-Jang, S. M., Mortensen, T., & Liu, J. (2021). Does media literacy help identification of fake news? Information literacy helps, but other literacies don’t. American Behavioral Scientist, 65(2), 371–388. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764219869406
Kapantai, E., Christopoulou, A., Berberidis, C., & Peristeras, V. (2021). A systematic literature review on disinformation: Toward a unified taxonomical framework. New Media & Society, 23(5), 1301–1326. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820959293
Kuchmaner, C. A., & Wiggins, J. (2021). Do I seem real to you? The role of external audiences in the consumption-driven self-authentication process. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 20(2), 487–498. https://doi.org/10.1002/cb.1890
Kumar, N., Venugopal, D., Qiu, L., & Kumar, S. (2018). Detecting review manipulation on online platforms with hierarchical supervised learning. Journal of Management Information Systems, 35(1), 350–380. https://doi.org/10.1080/07421222.2018.1440773
Kyriakidou, M., Cushion, S., Hughes, C., & Morani, M. (2023). Questioning fact-checking in the fight against disinformation: An audience perspective. Journalism Practice, 17(10), 2123–2139. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2023.2176520
Livingstone, S., Van Couvering, E., & Thumim, N. (2008). Converging traditions of research on media and information literacies: Disciplinary, critical, and methodological issues. In J. Coiro, M. Knobel, C. Lankshear, & D. J. Leu (Eds.), Handbook of research on new literacies (pp. 103–132). Routledge.
Lloyds Bank Trade. (2025). Pakistan: Economic and political overview. https://www.lloydsbanktrade.com/en/market-potential/pakistan/trade-profile
Mahdi, A., Farah, M. F., & Ramadan, Z. (2022). What to believe, whom to blame, and when to share: Exploring the fake news experience in the marketing context. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 39(3), 306–316. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCM-06-2021-4713
Mahl, D., Zeng, J., Schäfer, M. S., Egert, F. A., & Oliveira, T. (2024). “We follow the disinformation”: Conceptualizing and analyzing fact-checking cultures across countries. The International Journal of Press/Politics. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612241270004
Malik, M., Cortesi, S., & Gasser, U. (2013). The challenges of defining “news literacy.” Berkman Center for Internet & Society. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2342313
Micich, A., & Cross, R. J. (2023). How misinformation on social media has changed news. US PIRG Education Fund. https://pirg.org/edfund/articles/misinformation-on-social-media/
Mustafaraj, E., & Metaxas, P. T. (2017, June 25–28). The fake news spreading plague: Was it preventable? [Paper presentation]. Proceedings of the 2017 ACM on web science conference, New York, United States.
O’Connor, C., & Joffe, H. (2020). Intercoder reliability in qualitative research: Debates and practical guidelines. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 19, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406919899220
Osmundsen, M., Bor, A., Vahlstrup, P. B., Bechmann, A., & Petersen, M. B. (2021). Partisan polarization is the primary psychological motivation behind political fake news sharing on Twitter. American Political Science Review, 115(3), 999–1015. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055421000290
Paisana, M., Pinto-Martinho, A., & Cardoso, G. (2020). Trust and fake news: Exploratory analysis of the impact of news literacy on the relationship with news content in Portugal. Communication & Society, 33(2), 105–117. https://doi.org/10.15581/003.33.2.105-117
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2021). The psychology of fake news. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(5), 388–402. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.02.007
Prakash, G., Verma, R. K., Ilavarasan, P. V., & Kar, A. K. (2019, June 21–22). Authenticating fake news: An empirical study in India. Proceedings of IFIP WG 8.6 International Conference on Transfer and Diffusion of IT, Accra, Ghana.
Roslan, N. W., Rahim, N. A., Hamid, T. M. H. T. A., Roslan, N. M., & Roslan, S. N. A. (2022). Facebook vs. Twitter: Social media platform selection for news consumption among undergraduate students. SEARCH Journal of Media and Communication Research, 14(3), 117–129.
Rusbridger, A. (2018). Breaking news: The remaking of journalism and why it matters now. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Sadiq, I. (2021, December 3). Sialkot mob lynches Sri Lankan factory manager, burns corpse over blasphemy allegations. Dawn. https://www.dawn.com/news/1661728
Saldaña, M., Orchard, X., Rivera, S., & Bustamante-Pavez, G. (2024). “Your house won’t be yours anymore!” Effects of misinformation, news use, and media trust on Chile’s constitutional referendum. The International Journal of Press/Politics. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612241298853
Sampat, B., & Raj, S. (2022). Fake or real news? Understanding the gratifications and personality traits of individuals sharing fake news on social media platforms. Aslib Journal of Information Management, 74(5), 840–876. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-08-2021-0232
Saud, A., & Kazim, N. (2022). Disinformation and propaganda tactics: Impacts of Indian information warfare on Pakistan. Journal of Indian Studies, 8(2), 335–354.
Scolari, C. A., Masanet, M.-J., Guerrero-Pico, M., & Establés, M.-J. (2018). Transmedia literacy in the new media ecology: Teens’ transmedia skills and informal learning strategies. El Profesional de la Información, 27(4), 801–812. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2018.jul.09
Sharma, K., Qian, F., Jiang, H., Ruchansky, N., Zhang, M., & Liu, Y. (2019). Combating fake news: A survey on identification and mitigation techniques. ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology, 10(3), Article e21. https://doi.org/10.1145/3305260
Sun, Y., & Xie, J. (2024). Who shares misinformation on social media? A meta-analysis of individual traits related to misinformation sharing. Computers in Human Behavior, 158, Article e108271. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2024.108271
Swire, B., Berinsky, A. J., Lewandowsky, S., & Ecker, U. K. (2017). Processing political misinformation: Comprehending the Trump phenomenon. Royal Society Open Science, 4(3), Article e160802. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.160802
Tahir, A. S., Naseem, S., Salim, S., & Ali, S. N. (2025). Fake news and disinformation in Pakistan: A forensic linguistics investigation. Journal of Applied Linguistics and TESOL, 8(2), 735–746.
Talwar, S., Dhir, A., Kaur, P., Zafar, N., & Alrasheedy, M. (2019). Why do people share fake news? Associations between the dark side of social media use and fake news sharing behavior. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 51, 72–82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2019.05.026
Tandoc, E. C., Jr., Ling, R., Westlund, O., Duffy, A., Goh, D., & Zheng, W. L. (2018). Audiences’ acts of authentication in the age of fake news: A conceptual framework. New Media & Society, 20(8), 2745–2763. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817731756
Tsang, S. J. (2024). Misinformation, disinformation, and fake news? Proposing a typology framework of false information. Journalism. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849241304380
Valenzuela, S., Halpern, D., Katz, J. E., & Miranda, J. P. (2019). The paradox of participation versus misinformation: Social media, political engagement, and the spread of misinformation. Digital Journalism, 7(6), 802–823. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2019.1623701
Visentin, M., Pizzi, G., & Pichierri, M. (2019). Fake news, real problems for brands: The impact of content truthfulness and source credibility on consumers’ behavioral intentions toward the advertised brands. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 45(1), 99–112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intmar.2018.09.001
Waruwu, B. K., Tandoc, E. C., Duffy, A., Kim, N., & Ling, R. (2021). Telling lies together? Sharing news as a form of social authentication. New Media & Society, 23(9), 2516–2533. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820931017
Wei, C., Nawi, H. M., & Naeem, S. B. (2024). The uses and gratifications (U&G) model for understanding fake news sharing behavior on social media. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 50(5), Article e102938. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2024.102938
World Economic Forum. (2025). Global risks report 2025. https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-risks-report-2025/
Wu, S. (2024). What motivates audiences to report fake news? Uncovering a framework of factors that drive the community reporting of fake news on social media. Digital Journalism, 12(6), 790–807. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2023.2243489
Zhang, H., Zhu, C., Sang, G., & Questier, F. (2024). Effects of digital media literacy on primary school students’ digital media literacy: An experimental study. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 34(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10798-023-09824-y
Zhu, Q., Peng, T. Q., & Zhang, X. (2025). How do individual and societal factors shape news authentication? Comparing misinformation resilience across Hong Kong, the Netherlands, and the United States. The International Journal of Press/Politics. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612251318838
Copyright (c) 2025 Hafsah Javed, Bushra H Rahman
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyrights © Author(s) 2021
