The voice of few, the opinions of many: evidence of social biases in Twitter COVID-19 fake news sharing.
R Soc Open Sci
; 9(10): 220716, 2022 Oct.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-2087953
ABSTRACT
Online platforms play a relevant role in the creation and diffusion of false or misleading news. Concerningly, the COVID-19 pandemic is shaping a communication network which reflects the emergence of collective attention towards a topic that rapidly gained universal interest. Here, we characterize the dynamics of this network on Twitter, analysing how unreliable content distributes among its users. We find that a minority of accounts is responsible for the majority of the misinformation circulating online, and identify two categories of users a few active ones, playing the role of 'creators', and a majority playing the role of 'consumers'. The relative proportion of these groups (approx. 14% creators-86% consumers) appears stable over time consumers are mostly exposed to the opinions of a vocal minority of creators (which are the origin of 82% of fake content in our data), that could be mistakenly understood as representative of the majority of users. The corresponding pressure from a perceived majority is identified as a potential driver of the ongoing COVID-19 infodemic.
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Randomized controlled trials
Language:
English
Journal:
R Soc Open Sci
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Rsos.220716
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