POLITICAL CONTENT GRATIFICATION AND MISINFORMATION SUSCEPTIBILITY IN KENYAN SOCIAL MEDIA

Abstract

Social media user’s gratification with the online political information influences their exposure and sharing of political misinformation, disinformation and malinformation. This study sought to answer two questions: firstly, to what extent does political content gratification influences susceptibility to political misinformation exposure and sharing; and secondly, to what extent do heuristic processing, content bias, fear of social isolation, and the cultivation of political beliefs and attitudes mediate the relationship between political content gratification and susceptibility to political misinformation among Kenyan social media users. The study employed purposive and snowball sampling to collect data from 400 respondents active in online political participation. The results indicate that most Kenyans use Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Telegram and news aggregators, to access political information. Content bias and gratification were identified as facilitators of misinformation, while heuristic processing and cultivation effects amplified users' vulnerability to false information, subsequently increasing exposure and sharing. The analysis revealed that fear of social isolation had no significant effect on either exposure to or sharing of misinformation. However, the negative beta coefficient suggests a potential inverse relationship between fear of social isolation and misinformation-related behaviors, this relationship was not statistically significant.