Filtering strategies enable social media users to remove undesired content from their feeds, potentially creating homophilic environments. Although previous studies have addressed the individual-level factors and content features that influence these decisions, few have solely focused on users’ perceptions. Accordingly, this study applies social exchange theory to understand how users socially construct the process of unfriending. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with young Spaniards, we identify a widespread pattern of rejection over repetitive, opinion-challenging, and offensive posts, which we conceptualize as out-of-place content, a type of social media stimulus that hinders substantive online exchanges and challenges users’ understanding of social reality and individual values. This study contributes to current literature on unfriending by suggesting that filtering strategies are implemented gradually when posts overwhelm users’ tolerance threshold. Our findings also suggest that their deployment hinges on the closeness of the relationship between peers and social commitments formed in specific platforms. Future research is needed to assess to what extent the patterns identified in our interviews are present in the overall population.

Research has noted that political content on social media, both accurate and fake, may lead users to reconsider their political opinions and be persuaded. This study contributes to this topic by examining how political attitude change in social media unfolds according to users’ perceptions. Our findings, based on in-depth interviews with 30 Spanish social media users, show how the centrality of social media in citizens’ everyday life nudges them into a persuasive relationship in these ecologies. We conceptualize this dynamic relationship as social media symbiosis , an analogy that draws on the biological concept of symbiosis, and that explains the characteristics of perceived online persuasion: (1) the primacy of social media persuasion over other information sources, (2) its gradual and evolutionary nature, and (3) the persuasive relationships in which users may engage: mutualism, in which both sender and receiver reciprocally benefit and persuade each other; and parasitism, in which fake news creators harmfully persuade receivers while benefitting. Our study contributes to extant literature by theorizing about the persuasive relationship in which users perceive to engage in social media, and the rationales that facilitate it.

This study investigates gender inequalities in academia by examining differences in representation, citations, and h-index between male and female highly cited researchers across disciplines and geographic regions. Using a unique dataset from Google Scholar, this study analyzes 21,509 highly cited authors across 191 fields and all continents. We examine gender disparities in citations, h-index, and representation while controlling for research productivity and career length to determine if female researchers experience different outcomes compared to their male counterparts. The findings reveal that women are significantly underrepresented among highly cited scholars globally (0.255 women per man) and receive fewer citations and have lower h-indexes than men in most regions and disciplines. However, after controlling for productivity and career length, female scholars are cited more than men in the pooled sample, Asia, Europe, and in two fields (natural sciences and exact sciences/physics). Despite this, women’s h-index remains significantly lower than men’s in all regions except Africa and South America, and in all fields except social sciences. This study highlights the persistence of gender inequalities in academic representation and long-term impact, as measured by the h-index. The results suggest that while citation rates for female researchers can match or exceed those of male scholars when productivity is controlled for, structural barriers continue to limit women’s long-term recognition in academia. This research contributes to the understanding of gender disparities among top researchers, showing that while citation parity is possible, significant gender gaps remain in overall academic representation and long-term recognition through h-index measures.

Objectives: Misinformation has emerged as an important threat to democracies, fostering severe concerns among citizens worldwide. However, even in this context, research emphasizes that citizens play a crucial role in the dissemination of falsehoods on social media. While previous studies argued that most users unintentionally share fake news when misjudging its accuracy, recent evidence points to partisan identity as a stronger predictor of this behavior. This study puts the literature on misinformation concerns and fake news sharing into dialogue to better understand the associations in time of this behavior. We focus on WhatsApp, a prominent platform for the circulation of falsehoods which has remained relatively understudied.Methods: This study draws on a two‐wave panel survey fielded in Spain (N = 570) between May 2022 and July 2022.Results: We conceptualize the legitimation of partisan use of fake news—the belief that using falsehoods to criticize opposing ideologies is legitimate—and show that it mediates the relationship between misinformation concerns and fake news sharing on WhatsApp. We also show that social media news use and age predict, positively and negatively respectively, both legitimation of partisan use of fake news and fake news sharing. The direct effect of misinformation concerns on fake news sharing is non‐statistically significant.Conclusion: Overall, the study illustrates how, in the current polarized environment, fake news may be weaponized to serve partisan interests.

There are severe concerns over the widespread presence of fake news on social media and the vulnerability of citizens to its influence. Prior research on fake news has largely focused on the potential threat it poses to democracy, and has payed less attention to an opposing behavior that has emerged in parallel and mitigates its effects: citizens’ corrective actions. This study seeks to examine the sociopolitical antecedents that drive citizens to correct fake news on social media. Drawing on panel survey data from Spain (T ² = 570), we explore the role that using social media for news, cross-cutting political discussion, and support for fake news censorship have on intention to correct misinformation on social media. Our findings clarify the positive associations between the use of social media for news, the frequency of cross-cutting discussion, and support for fake news censorship over the intention to correct misinformation. Briefly, our study shows how social media’s mix of news, misinformation and political disagreement can motivate users to undertake pro-social democratic behaviors like corrective actions.