Does an image facilitate the sharing of negative news on social media? An experimental investigation

Negative news on social media is always disseminated promptly and widely which leads to negative economic and social outcomes that render a practical research agenda necessary to understand user sharing decisions. Moreover, news posted on social media usually includes images, but little is known about the role of such images in shaping user decisions to share negative news. To fill this gap, the humans' affective–cognitive model of information processing (HACIP) was developed to explore the effects of images on the sharing of negative news and to investigate the contingent role of images in the sharing decision. To test the model and hypotheses, a scenario-based online experiment was conducted, which yielded 285 valid responses. Analysis results indicate that images in negative news induce users' negative emotion and arousal, which influence their sharing decision. Further, the presence of images strengthens the effect of negative emotion and weakens the effect of information uniqueness. Thus, this study contributes to the literature by identifying the distinct role of images in information processing and by proposing a brand-new framework to explore user sharing of negative news.