DDRIG in DRMS: The Impact of Normative Influence on Competitive Framing of Risks on Social Media

Social media contains an abundance of misinformation on about risk issues that can disproportionately harm vulnerable populations. Competing information can create uncertainty, leading people to turn to available social cues to form risk judgments and make decisions. This research revolves around two questions: (1) To what extent do social norms reflected in user comments shape risk attitudes and behaviors in competitive information environments? (2) To what extent do dynamic norms in risk messages pre-empt or counter the effects of misinformation, even more so than social norms in user comments? The findings offer risk regulators valuable insights on how to craft risk messages that can cut through the clutter of misinformation to promote pro-social outcomes. The researchers investigate these questions using two survey experiments that integrate research on competitive framing and social norms. Competitive framing research has primarily focused on how individual perceptions (e.g., cognition and emotion) influence persuasive outcomes, but there is limited understanding of the role of social perceptions on outcomes. Given that social media are inherently social in nature, social perceptions are central to this work. The research also explores the impact of dynamic norms, which highlight the change in a minority behavior over time, thus departing from conventional social norms research that focuses on static norms (e.g., description of prevalent or socially approved behavior). The intellectual merit of this research lies in advancing knowledge about the underlying mechanism of social perception influencing risk judgments and decisions in competitive information environments. It also illuminates the relative impact of dynamic norms compared to static norms and the role of minority influence on risk attitudes and behaviors. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.