A. Yang, Jieun Shin, Alvin Zhou, Ke M. Huang-Isherwood, Eugene Lee, Chuqing Dong, H. Kim, Yafei Zhang, Jingyi Sun, Yiqi Li, Yuanfeixue Nan, Lichen Zhen, Wenlin Liu
{"title":"The battleground of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on Facebook: Fact checkers vs. misinformation spreaders","authors":"A. Yang, Jieun Shin, Alvin Zhou, Ke M. Huang-Isherwood, Eugene Lee, Chuqing Dong, H. Kim, Yafei Zhang, Jingyi Sun, Yiqi Li, Yuanfeixue Nan, Lichen Zhen, Wenlin Liu","doi":"10.37016/mr-2020-78","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-78","url":null,"abstract":"Our study examines Facebook posts containing nine prominent COVID-19 vaccine misinformation topics that circulated on the platform between March 1st, 2020 and March 1st, 2021. We first identify misinformation spreaders and fact checkers, further dividing the latter group into those who repeat misinformation to debunk the false claim and those who share correct information without repeating the misinformation. Our analysis shows that, on Facebook, there are almost as many fact checkers as misinformation spreaders. In particular, fact checkers’ posts that repeat the original misinformation received significantly more comments than posts from misinformation spreaders. However, we found that misinformation spreaders were far more likely to take on central positions in the misinformation URL co-sharing network than fact checkers. This demonstrates the remarkable ability of misinformation spreaders to coordinate communication strategies across topics.","PeriodicalId":93289,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Kennedy School misinformation review","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69804685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Irene V. Pasquetto, B. Swire‐Thompson, Michelle A. Amazeen
{"title":"Tackling misinformation: What researchers could do with social media data","authors":"Irene V. Pasquetto, B. Swire‐Thompson, Michelle A. Amazeen","doi":"10.37016/mr-2020-49","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-49","url":null,"abstract":"Written by Michelle A. Amazeen, Fabrício Benevenuto, Nadia M. Brashier, Robert M. Bond, Lia C. Bozarth, Ceren Budak, Ullrich K. H. Ecker, Lisa K. Fazio, Emilio Ferrara, Andrew J. Flanagin, Ales-sandro Flammini, Deen Freelon, Nir Grinberg, Ralph Hertwig, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Kenneth Jo-seph, Jason J. Jones, R. Kelly Garrett, Daniel Kreiss, Shannon McGregor, Jasmine McNealy, Drew Margolin, Alice Marwick, FiIippo Menczer, Miriam J. Metzger, Seungahn Nah, Stephan Lewan-dowsky, Philipp Lorenz-Spreen, Pablo Ortellado, Irene Pasquetto, Gordon Pennycook, Ethan Porter, David G. Rand, Ronald Robertson, Briony Swire-Thompson, Francesca Tripodi, Soroush Vosoughi, Chris Vargo, Onur Varol, Brian E. Weeks, John Wihbey, Thomas J. Wood, & Kai-Cheng Yang","PeriodicalId":93289,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Kennedy School misinformation review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46780231","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A. Enders, J. Uscinski, Casey A. Klofstad, Justin Stoler
{"title":"The different forms of COVID-19 misinformation and their consequences","authors":"A. Enders, J. Uscinski, Casey A. Klofstad, Justin Stoler","doi":"10.37016/mr-2020-48","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-48","url":null,"abstract":"As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, an understanding of the structure and organization of beliefs in pandemic conspiracy theories and misinformation becomes increasingly critical for addressing the threat posed by these dubious ideas. In polling Americans about beliefs in 11 such ideas, we observed clear groupings of beliefs that correspond with different individual-level characteristics (e.g., support for Trump, distrust of scientists) and behavioral intentions (e.g., to take a vaccine, to engage in social activities). Moreover, we found that conspiracy theories enjoy more support, on average, than misinformation about dangerous health practices. Our findings suggest several paths for policymakers, communicators, and scientists to minimize the spread and impact of COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories.","PeriodicalId":93289,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Kennedy School misinformation review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48631586","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"State media warning labels can counteract the effects of foreign disinformation","authors":"Jack Nassetta, Kimberly Gross","doi":"10.37016/mr-2020-45","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-45","url":null,"abstract":"Platforms are increasingly using transparency, whether it be in the form of political advertising disclosures or a record of page name changes, to combat disinformation campaigns. In the case of state-controlled media outlets on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter this has taken the form of labeling their connection to a state. We show that these labels have the ability to mitigate the effects of viewing election misinformation from the Russian media channel RT. However, this is only the case when the platform prominently places the label so as not to be missed by users.","PeriodicalId":93289,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Kennedy School misinformation review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44330554","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Research note: The scale of Facebook’s problem depends upon how ‘fake news’ is classified","authors":"R. Rogers","doi":"10.37016/mr-2020-43","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-43","url":null,"abstract":"Ushering in the contemporary ‘fake news’ crisis, Craig Silverman of Buzzfeed News reported that it outperformed mainstream news on Facebook in the three months prior to the 2016 US presidential elections. Here the report’s methods and findings are revisited for 2020. Examining Facebook user engagement of election-related stories, and applying Silverman’s classification of fake news, it was found that the problem has worsened, implying that the measures undertaken to date have not remedied the issue. If, however, one were to classify ‘fake news’ in a stricter fashion, as Facebook as well as certain media organizations do with the notion of ‘false news’, the scale of the problem shrinks. A smaller scale problem could imply a greater role for fact-checkers (rather than deferring to mass-scale content moderation), while a larger one could lead to the further politicisation of source adjudication, where labelling particular sources broadly as ‘fake’, ‘problematic’ and/or ‘junk’ results in backlash.","PeriodicalId":93289,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Kennedy School misinformation review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47655193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The weaponization of web archives: Data craft and COVID-19 publics","authors":"Amelia Acker, Mitch Chaiet","doi":"10.37016/MR-2020-41","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37016/MR-2020-41","url":null,"abstract":"An unprecedented volume of harmful health misinformation linked to the coronavirus pandemic has led to the appearance of misinformation tactics that leverage web archives in order to evade content moderation on social media platforms. Here we present newly identified manipulation techniques designed to maximize the value, longevity, and spread of harmful and non-factual content across social media using provenance information from web archives and social media analytics. After identifying conspiracy content that has been archived by human actors with the Wayback Machine, we report on user patterns of “screensampling,” where images of archived misinformation are spread via social platforms. We argue that archived web resources from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and subsequent screenshots contribute to the COVID-19 “misinfodemic” in platforms. Understanding these manipulation tactics that use sources from web archives reveals something vexing about information practices during pandemics—the desire to access reliable information even after it has been moderated and fact-checked, for some individuals, will give health misinformation and conspiracy theories more traction because it has been labeled as specious content by platforms.","PeriodicalId":93289,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Kennedy School misinformation review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47428089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Research note: The spread of political misinformation on online subcultural platforms","authors":"Anthony G. Burton, Dimitri Koehorst","doi":"10.37016/MR-2020-40","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37016/MR-2020-40","url":null,"abstract":"This research note explores the extent to which misinformation and other types of “junk” content are spread on political boards and forums on 4chan and Reddit. Our findings suggest that these userbases are impervious to the appeal of low-quality “pink slime” news sites with algorithmically generated conservative talking points masquerading as journalism. However, these political boards' reliance on YouTube as a news source—specifically a group of ideologically-charged, misinfor-mation-laden channels that are part of what has been called the “Alternative Influence Network”—shows that cross-platform movements must be factored in to studying the spread of misinfor-mation. In addition, this study illustrates the viability of cross-platform hyperlinks as an object of study to better understand how users on particular platforms interact with the web at large.","PeriodicalId":93289,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Kennedy School misinformation review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44740966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Amelia M Jamison, David A Broniatowski, Mark Dredze, Anu Sangraula, Michael C Smith, Sandra C Quinn
{"title":"Not just conspiracy theories: Vaccine opponents and proponents add to the COVID-19 'infodemic' on Twitter.","authors":"Amelia M Jamison, David A Broniatowski, Mark Dredze, Anu Sangraula, Michael C Smith, Sandra C Quinn","doi":"10.37016/mr-2020-38","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-38","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In February 2020, the World Health Organization announced an 'infodemic' -- a deluge of both accurate and inaccurate health information -- that accompanied the global pandemic of COVID-19 as a major challenge to effective health communication. We assessed content from the most active vaccine accounts on Twitter to understand how existing online communities contributed to the 'infodemic' during the early stages of the pandemic. While we expected vaccine opponents to share misleading information about COVID-19, we also found vaccine proponents were not immune to spreading less reliable claims. In both groups, the single largest topic of discussion consisted of narratives comparing COVID-19 to other diseases like seasonal influenza, often downplaying the severity of the novel coronavirus. When considering the scope of the 'infodemic,' researchers and health communicators must move beyond focusing on known bad actors and the most egregious types of misinformation to scrutinize the full spectrum of information -- from both reliable and unreliable sources -- that the public is likely to encounter online.</p>","PeriodicalId":93289,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Kennedy School misinformation review","volume":"1 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8345314/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39293021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ibuprofen Narratives in Five European Countries During the COVID-19 Pandemic","authors":"Sergi Xaudiera, A. Cardenal","doi":"10.37016/mr-2020-029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-029","url":null,"abstract":"We follow the trajectory of the unverified story about the adverse effects of using Ibuprofen for treating the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on Twitter, across five European countries. Our findings suggest that the impact of misinformation 2 is massive when credible sources (e","PeriodicalId":93289,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Kennedy School misinformation review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43612699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Do the right thing: Tone may not affect correction of misinformation on social media","authors":"L. Bode, E. Vraga, M. Tully","doi":"10.37016/mr-2020-026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-026","url":null,"abstract":"An experiment conducted with 610 participants suggests that corrections to misinformation – pointing out information that is wrong or misleading and offering credible information in its place – on social media reduce misperceptions regardless of the correction’s tone (uncivil, affirmational, or neutral). There is also an opportunity to correct secondary but related misperceptions (dealing with the same topic but with a different specific fact) when responding to misinformation on social media. Our findings emphasize that correction on social media could operate as part of a broader strategy to reduce beliefs in misinformation, and users should be encouraged to bring additional relevant information into the conversation","PeriodicalId":93289,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Kennedy School misinformation review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44068097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}