Identifying and characterizing superspreaders of low-credibility content on Twitter.

ABSTRACT: The world's digital information ecosystem continues to struggle with the spread of misinformation. Prior work has suggested that users who consistently disseminate a disproportionate amount of low-credibility content-so-called superspreaders-are at the center of this problem. We quantitatively confirm this hypothesis and introduce simple metrics to predict the top superspreaders several months into the future. We then conduct a qualitative review to characterize the most prolific superspreaders and analyze their sharing behaviors. Superspreaders include pundits with large followings, low-credibility media outlets, personal accounts affiliated with those media outlets, and a range of influencers. They are primarily political in nature and use more toxic language than the typical user sharin

SUBMITTER: DeVerna MR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11111090 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature