Abstract: Digital social media platforms play a crucial role in dissipating information and shaping online environments. Due to the increased consumption of information on digital platforms, the spread of misinformation has become a major threat to humanity. Previous research has identified that echo chambers in digital social media platforms are one of the responsible factors for spreading misinformation. Echo chambers are information-limiting environments where users’ opinions are reinforced due to the reverberance of opinion-reinforcing content (Facebook group or a page dedicated to a specific political ideology where like-minded information is shared, promoted and discussed). Our study investigates the interplay of user-level factors like political ideologies and personality types combined with platform-level factors on the changes in perceptions while consuming information. This research focuses on studying the impact of responsible news dissemination by platforms on dismantling echo chambers and reducing the spread of misinformation. An experiment is conducted in the US political context to analyse the same. Data from 464 respondents were collected and analysed over two phases of experimentation. We found that the impact of opinion-challenging information on reducing fake news dissemination is higher among people with right-wing political orientation, providing imperative for digital social media platforms to foster responsible digital environments by recognising the diversity of digital platform users and tailoring their approaches to tackle misinformation and echo chambers effectively. On a theoretical level, this research contributes to the literature by studying the information consumption behaviour of social media users from a psychological perspective and bringing together various arguments from the literature and testing them.

About the Speaker: Ashish Kumar Jha is an Associate Professor in Business Analytics at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He is the founding director of M.Sc. in Business Analytics and Director of Trinity Centre for Digital Business and Analytics at Trinity College Dublin where he has established the Business Analytics/IS group. He has been awarded an honorary M.A. by Trinity College Dublin in recognition of his contribution to the university. His primary area of research is how firms and users interact and communicate on social media and its impact on firm value and spread of information/misinformation. He has previously worked in France and India and continues to deliver visiting lectures in many countries including USA, Canada, China, UAE, India among others. Ashish is a distinguished member of Association of Information Systems and has represented Regions 2 (Europe and Africa) on Awards committee of AIS. Ashish is an associate editor at European Journal of Information Systems and Information & Management and a senior editor at Journal of Organizational computing and E-Commerce and regularly reviews for all top journals in the field including MISQ, JMIS, JAIS among others. His works have been published in journals like JMIS, I&M, DSS, Decision Sciences, IJPE among others and he regularly presents at top conferences in the field. Ashish regularly consults and trains senior executives in Ireland and beyond and has worked on creating thought pieces for companies like Microsoft Ireland, Novartis, EY Ireland, BNY Mellon. He also holds multiple patents in the field of Robotic Process Automation. Ashish is well funded by the Science Foundation Ireland and is a funded investigator for SFI-Funded research centre ADAPT.