The World Economic Forum listed massive digital misinformation as one of= the main threats for our society. The spreading of unsubstantiated rumors = may have serious consequences on public opinion such as in the case of rumo= rs about Ebola causing disruption to health-care workers. In this work we t= arget Facebook to characterize information consumption patterns of 1.2M Ita= lian users with respect to verified (science news) and unverified (conspira= cy news) contents. Through a thorough quantitative analysis we provide impo= rtant insights about the anatomy of the system across which misinformation = might spread. In particular, we show that users' engagement on verified (or= unverified) content correlates with the number of friends having similar c= onsumption patterns (homophily). Finally, we measure how this social system= responded to the injection of 4, 709 false information. We find that the f= requent (and selective) exposure to specific kind of content (polarization)= is a good proxy for the detection of homophile clusters where certain kind= of rumors are more likely to spread.

Homophily and polarization in the age of misinformation

Caldarelli G;
2016-01-01

Abstract

The World Economic Forum listed massive digital misinformation as one of= the main threats for our society. The spreading of unsubstantiated rumors = may have serious consequences on public opinion such as in the case of rumo= rs about Ebola causing disruption to health-care workers. In this work we t= arget Facebook to characterize information consumption patterns of 1.2M Ita= lian users with respect to verified (science news) and unverified (conspira= cy news) contents. Through a thorough quantitative analysis we provide impo= rtant insights about the anatomy of the system across which misinformation = might spread. In particular, we show that users' engagement on verified (or= unverified) content correlates with the number of friends having similar c= onsumption patterns (homophily). Finally, we measure how this social system= responded to the injection of 4, 709 false information. We find that the f= requent (and selective) exposure to specific kind of content (polarization)= is a good proxy for the detection of homophile clusters where certain kind= of rumors are more likely to spread.
File in questo prodotto:
Non ci sono file associati a questo prodotto.

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11771/3440
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus 68
social impact