Reasons why hoax, fake information, conspiracy theory attract attention and spread explosive speed on the Internet clearly in research

ByRobert Couse-Baker

World Economic ForumHas releasedOutlook on the Global Agenda 2014(The ten largest trends in the world in 2014)The rapid spread of misinformation onlineThere is a lot of information on the net ranging from hoax, misinformation, fake information to conspiracy theory, as there is an item called "Diffusion of false alarms on-line". A research team by Mr. Walter Quattrociocchi of Northeastern University and his colleagues is conducting research on why such information spreads.

How to Start a Conspiracy Theory on Facebook - Megan Garber - The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/03/how-to-start-a-conspiracy-theory-on-facebook/284511/


Social networks are structurally optimized for each user to "share" information. However, since social networking service (hereinafter SNS) itself has no ability to distinguish goodness of information and classify them, rumors, fake information, conspiracy theory, etc.Easy to diffuseIt is not an exaggeration to say that it has properties.

ByHersson Piratoba

Quattrociocchi and his research team surveyed more than 2.3 million Italian Facebook users in order to gain a standard on how much Facebook users are likely to be cheated and added to "political information posted on Facebook" It was said that investigation was conducted in the election season of 2013. According to the survey, from Facebook, users of "more than 190,000 posts, 23 million or more" likes ", about 4.4 million" comments ", more than 4.7 million" likes & comments " It seems that it was decided to analyze whether to treat it to "

The analysis is based on the number of comments on "likes" and posts, and we are also investigating how Facebook users mainly deal with news postings coming from three categories. Three categories are three main types: the main media and other news organizations (news sites picking up topics that major media do not report) and political commentaries.

ByDave Rutt

In the research, the time from the first comment to fake information until the last comment arrives (the time when it became a topic on the net) was measured. The research team said that he wanted to know how long false information was believed to be correct information from this time, but the findings turned out to be those who are accustomed to Facebook and SNS It certainly seemed to be convinced that it was "certainly".

The results of the survey were compared in the "time when it was talked on the net" for each organization that reported the news, and it is as shown in the graph below. The vertical axis shows the probability and the horizontal axis shows "time when becoming a topic", the red line shows major media, the yellow line shows other media, the blue line shows the site where political posting is done, The graph shows how much information sources divided into three categories are subject to topics for how long. Looking at this graph, the information "reliability(Information sources divided into three categories) "has little influence on" topical time ", so the elements such as" truth "or" lie "for the topical news on SNS are very important It is understood that it is not.


And the graph below is similar to this graph. In the graph below, the vertical axis represents the probability, the horizontal axis represents the number of actions (favorites or comments) done on Facebook, and the red, yellow and blue lines show the same thing as the upper graph.


Despite the information of different nature, the patterns are very similar, even information like conspiracy theory without confirmation can go up to a topic of the same time as other information and draw user's attention I understand that.

Although studies have not checked the contents of conversation, although it may be that Facebook users are quickly deceiving information and they are commenting about that, it is more noteworthy that " It is said that the user equally attracts attention regardless whether it is a false alarm or a lie whether it is a rumor or a lie.

ByJess Liotta and Colin Liotta