Impact of correcting misinformation on social disruption.

People are obtaining more and more information from social media and other online sources, but the spread of misinformation can lead to social disruption. In particular, social networking services (SNSs) can easily spread information of uncertain authenticity and factuality. Although many studies have proposed methods that addressed how to suppress the spread of misinformation on SNSs, few works have examined the impact on society of diffusing both misinformation and its corrective information. This study models the effects of effort to reduce misinformation and the diffusion of corrective information on social disruption, and it clarifies these effects. With the aim of reducing the impact on social disruption, we show that not only misinformation but also corrective information can cause social disruption, and we clarify how to control the spread of the latter to limit its impact. We analyzed the misinformation about a toilet-paper shortage and its correction as well as the social disruption this event caused in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. First, (1) we analyzed the extent to which misinformation and its corrections spread on SNS, and then (2) we created a model to estimate the impact of misinformation and its corrections on the world. Finally, (3) We used our model to analyze the change in this impact when the diffusion of the misinformation and its corrections changed. Based on our analysis results in (1), the corrective information spread much more widely than the misinformation. From the model developed in (2), the corrective information caused excessive purchasing behavior. The analysis results in (3) show that the amount of corrective information required to minimize the societal impact depends on the amount of misinformation diffusion. Most previous studies concentrated on the impact of corrective information on attitudes toward misinformation. On the other hand, the most significant contribution of this study is that it focuses on the impact of corrective information on society and clarifies the appropriate amount of it.

Net-TF-SW: Event Popularity Quantification with Network Structure.

Event popularity quantification is essential in the determination of current trends in events on social media and the internet. Particularly, it is important during a crisis to ensure appropriate information transmission and prevention of false-rumor diffusion. Here, we propose Net-TF-SW - a noise-robust and explainable topic popularity analysis method. This method is applied to tweets related to COVID-19 and the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster, which are two significant crises that have caused significant anxiety and confusion among Japanese citizens. The proposed method is compared to existing methods, and it is verified to be more robust with respect to noise.

Social Emotions Under the Spread of COVID-19 Using Social Media

The spread of COVID-19, the so-called new coronavirus, is currently having an enormous social and economic impact on the entire world. Under such a circumstance, the spread of information about the new coronavirus on SNS is having a significant impact on economic losses and social decision-making. In this study, we investigated how the new type of coronavirus has become a social topic in Japan, and how it has been discussed. In order to determine what kind of impact it had on people, we collected and analyzed Japanese tweets containing words related to the new corona on Twitter. First, we analyzed the bias of users who tweeted. As a result, it is clear that the bias of users who tweeted about the new coronavirus almost disappeared after February 28, 2020, when the new coronavirus landed in Japan and a state of emergency was declared in Hokkaido, and the new corona became a popular topic. Second, we analyzed the emotional words included in tweets to analyze how people feel about the new coronavirus. The results show that the occurrence of a particular social event can change the emotions expressed on social media.