[7] Inattentional blindness is a theory that suggests that individuals fail to perceive information due to lack of attention.
[8] The inattentional blindness theory, then, suggests that shifting attention to accuracy and veracity will increase the quality of news that people subsequently share, offering a useful framework for countering misinformation.
Although useful, psychological theories do not adequately capture the social nature of holding and sharing beliefs, especially online.
[9] According to ACT, socialization imbues concepts with shared connotative meanings, known as sentiments, which humans use to make sense of experiences.
[10] Research suggests that the "interpretation, encoding, and response to false information" is a process driven by affects—including the affect of credibility.
Nodes may be people, organizations, or other types of social entities, and ties may be communications, alliances, friendships, and more.
This theory is useful for devising countermeasures to misinformation on a social media platform level, such as down ranking or removing posts and enabling forwarding restriction policies on suspicious users.