Motivations to connect with like-minded audiences increase partisan sharing on social media

Social media have been accused of facilitating the spread of partisan, hostile, and false news in ways that may foster ideological and affective polarization. Prior research has emphasized that individuals are motivated to selectively share partisan news if it promotes their political convictions or identity. Using a field study of news sharing behavior on Twitter (Study 1: N=1308) and two online experiments (Study 2: N=1735; Study 3: N=1637), we show that perceptions of the audience as being politically aligned is a key driver of partisan sharing. Partisan social media users selectively share congruent political news based on anticipation of positive reactions from like-minded audiences, and refrain from sharing news to avoid upsetting politically dissimilar followers. The evidence for audience effects on partisan sharing in the field Study 1 is mostly clear for real news and it is compelling for both true and false news in the experimental Studies 2-3. With Study 3, we further show that partisan sharing is partly driven by social motivations to connect with, be liked by, and mobilize politically like-minded audiences, in parallel to intrinsic factors. This suggests that the formation of “echo chambers” may trigger social motives that further the sharing of polarizing and false claims.