One of the central aims of SoMe4Dem is to understand how citizens navigate digital information environments that demand constant, rapid judgments. Our recently completed experimental study provides an important insight: what differs between social-media users is not their trust in others or in institutions, but the way they allocate attention and respond under pressure. 

Across two experiments involving high-frequency Twitter/X users and non-active users (individuals who never post on the platform in the previous 12 months), we find that the two groups display strikingly similar levels of both interpersonal and institutional trust. Users are no more cynical, no more skeptical of institutions, and no more distrustful of others than non-active users. Yet when placed in fast-paced decision environments, their behaviors diverge sharply. 

Frequent users, who are accustomed to rapid feeds, answer more items under time pressure and rely more heavily on quick heuristics and socially derived cues. This boosts their response volume but not their per-judgment accuracy, and leads them to follow cues even when these signals are incorrect. Non-active users, by contrast, slow down and deliberate more; with structured cues, their correctedness improves even though they answer fewer items.

The sharing stage reveals an even clearer pattern. Across both phases, frequent users consistently share and like substantially more content than non-active users—including items they themselves had just judged as false—demonstrating that recognition of inaccuracy does not translate into restraint in diffusion. Their behavior points to a stable and robust dissociation between belief and sharing: even when they correctly identify low-quality or false headlines, high-frequency users still choose to amplify them, suggesting that habitual engagement, platform-driven rhythms, or social motives override accuracy considerations.

For the democratic information environment, this matters: misinformation risks do not stem from lower trust, but from speed-driven habits shaped by platform experience. Strengthening democratic resilience may therefore require interventions that target how people engage under time pressure—not merely what they believe.

Preprint: Cruciani, Caterina and Gardenal, Gloria and Sartoris, Costanza and Moretti, Anna, Knowing It’s False and Sharing It Anyway: Speed, Trust, and the Spread of Misinformation (January 30, 2026). Venice School of Management - Department of Management Working Paper No. 1, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6154051 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6154051