Unknown

Dataset Information

0

The voice of few, the opinions of many: evidence of social biases in Twitter COVID-19 fake news sharing.


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.

SUBMITTER: Castioni P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9597167 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

altmetric image

Publications

The voice of few, the opinions of many: evidence of social biases in Twitter COVID-19 fake news sharing.

Castioni Piergiorgio P   Andrighetto Giulia G   Gallotti Riccardo R   Polizzi Eugenia E   De Domenico Manlio M  

Royal Society open science 20221026 10


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 circulat  ...[more]

Similar Datasets

| S-EPMC7390799 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC8062041 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC9361856 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC10637098 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC6315042 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC7302448 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC10225687 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC7340407 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC8397611 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC8800852 | biostudies-literature