Deciphering Trust Dynamics in Online Fake News: A QCA-Guided Meta-Synthesis

The growing threat of online fake news has piqued the interest of both practitioners and scholars. Nonetheless, as the complexity of fake news rapidly escalates into a crisis, it is still unclear which combination of factors dictates believability in fake news. To this purpose, we evaluate the expanding corpus of fake news research on brands online and deliver crucial insights through a methodological fusion of meta-synthesis and qualitative comparative analysis. A qualitative comparative analysis reveals the absence of media literacy as a necessary condition, two distinct configurations that induce belief in fake news, and the negligible influence of partisan perspectives and ideological leanings on belief in fake news. This is accompanied by the formulation of a set of propositions to guide empirical advancements in the field. We discuss directions for future research and implications for theory and practice.