Anger can make fake news viral online

Fake news that manipulates political elections, strikes financial systems, and
even incites riots is more viral than real news online, resulting in unstable
societies and buffeted democracy. While factor that drives the viral spread of
fake news is rarely explored. In this study, it is unexpectedly found that the easier
contagion of fake news online is positively associated with the greater anger it
carries. The same results in Twitter and Weibo indicate that this correlation is
independent of the platform. Moreover, mutations in emotions like increasing
anger will progressively speed up the information spread. Increasing the
occupation of anger by 0.1 and reducing that of joy by 0.1 are associated
with the generation of nearly six more retweets in the Weibo dataset. Offline
questionnaires reveal that anger leads to more incentivized audiences in terms
of anxiety management and information sharing and accordingly makes fake
news more contagious than real news online. Cures such as tagging anger in
social media could be implemented to slow or prevent the contagion of fake
news at the source.