Content uploaded by Fabiana Zollo
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Fabiana Zollo on Jun 09, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
Trend of Narratives in the Age of Misinformation
PLOS One
Abstract and Figures
Social media enabled a direct path from producer to consumer of contents changing the way users get informed, debate, and shape their worldviews. Such a disintermediation might weaken consensus on social relevant issues in favor of rumors, mistrust, or conspiracy thinking—e.g., chem-trails inducing global warming, the link between vaccines and autism, or the New World Order conspiracy. Previous studies pointed out that consumers of conspiracy-like content are likely to aggregate in homophile clusters—i.e., echo-chambers. Along this path we study, by means of a thorough quantitative analysis, how different topics are consumed inside the conspiracy echo-chamber in the Italian Facebook. Through a semi-automatic topic extraction strategy, we show that the most consumed contents semantically refer to four specific categories: environment, diet, health, and geopolitics. We find similar consumption patterns by comparing users activity (likes and comments) on posts belonging to these different semantic categories. Finally, we model users mobility across the distinct topics finding that the more a user is active, the more he is likely to span on all categories. Once inside a conspiracy narrative users tend to embrace the overall corpus.
Figures - available via license: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Content may be subject to copyright.
... Research has shown that misinformation and authentic information differ in terms of how the former can be created with the intention of triggering emotions such as fear, anxiety, or sympathy [22,158]. In order to produce these responses, misinformation creators employ personal, negative, and opinionated styles [14,114]. Source credibility is another notable characteristic of distinguishing between authentic information and misinformation. ...
... Personal, negative, and opinionated tones predominate in misinformation narratives which frequently provoke dread, anxiety, and mistrust of institutions [14,114]. ...
Game-based interventions are widely used to combat misinformation online by employing the "inoculation approach". However, most current interventions are designed as single-player games, presenting players with limited predefined choices. Such restrictions reduce replayability and may lead to an overly simplistic understanding of the processes of misinformation phenomenon and the debunking. This study seeks to address these issues, and empower people to better understand the opinion influencing and misinformation debunking processes. We did this by creating a Player versus Player (PvP) game where participants attempt to either generate or debunk misinformation to convince LLM-represented public opinion. Using a within-subjects mixed-methods study design (N=47), we found that this game significantly raised participants' media literacy and improved their ability to identify misinformation. Our qualitative exploration revealed how participants' use of debunking and content creation strategies deepened their understanding of the nature of disinformation. We demonstrate how LLMs can be integrated into PvP games to foster greater understanding of contrasting viewpoints and highlight social challenges.
... Bessi, Coletto, et al. (2015) find that polarized users of scientific news exhibit a high tendency to comment on conspiracy pages. Moreover, Bessi, Zollo, et al. (2015) and Del Vicario et al. (2016) investigate a selective exposure phenomenon that leads to the aggregation of individuals around shared beliefs and worldviews, thereby contributing to the formation of homogeneous clusters, or "echo chambers." Their findings highlight that individuals tend to gravitate F I G U R E 6 A Summary of the frequency of publications across all of the search queries and years. ...
... With a significant presence worldwide, Facebook has become a primary platform for news consumption in numerous countries (Dewey, 2016). Recognizing the profound impact of this phenomenon, in the first phase of our study, researchers have directed their focus towards understanding news consumption patterns on Facebook (Bessi, Coletto, et al., 2015;Bessi, Zollo, et al., 2015;Del Vicario et al., 2016;Schmidt et al., 2017;Zollo et al., 2015). ...
Fake news on social media spreads faster and has become a major societal concern, prompting numerous publications and knowledge sharing among researchers. This research aims to understand the shifting nature of fake news by investigating the citation relationships between significant publications using key route main path analysis (MPA). The process involves generating keywords, collecting and selecting relevant data, and conducting MPA on fake news in social media. The study analyzes 4.057 publications from 2010 to 2023, identifying 27 influential works shaping the knowledge diffusion in fake news research. Findings reveal two main phases: understanding fake news consumption patterns and analyzing its dissemination and detection mechanisms. Through multiple‐global MPA, five research trends are identified: health misinformation, fact‐checking, sharing behavior, fake news recognition, and physiological interventions. The study shows a continuous rise in publications and citations, with current trends focusing on health‐related misinformation. This analysis offers insights into the development and diffusion of fake news topics on social media, emphasizing the importance of historical development in guiding future research by uncovering current trends. Highlighting the historical progression of research provides valuable context, enabling a more nuanced understanding of the field.
... However, not much is known about the role of cognitive factors in driving users to aggregate in echo chambers supporting their preferred narrative. Recent studies suggest confirmation bias as one of the driving forces of content selection, which eventually leads to the emergence of polarized communities [12][13][14][15][16]. ...
... Still, not much is known about the role of cognitive factors in driving users to aggregate in echo chambers supporting their favorite narrative. Recent studies suggest confirmation bias as one of the driving forces of content selection, which eventually leads to the emergence of polarized communities [12][13][14][15]. ...
On social media algorithms for content promotion, accounting for users preferences, might limit the exposure to unsolicited contents. In this work, we study how the same contents (videos) are consumed on different platforms -- i.e. Facebook and YouTube -- over a sample of 12M of users. Our findings show that the same content lead to the formation of echo chambers, irrespective of the online social network and thus of the algorithm for content promotion. Finally, we show that the users' commenting patterns are accurate early predictors for the formation of echo-chambers.
... These studies also showed that much of this misinformation was very much influential and garnered much more popularity than facts. Personal opinion and, negative tones that are always reflected in the narratives of misinformation may induce emotional reactions and spread at a faster rate on social networks [95][96][97][98][99][100]. Several studies confirmed that hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis functioning is associated with such kind of self-reported prejudice. ...
Myths, misinformation, facts like posts spread by social media during COVID-19 pandemic had an enormous effect on psychological health. This study aimed to investigate social media based COVID-19's posts and the psychological health status of participants. A cross-sectional, online survey-based study was conducted in between April to October 2021 using a structured and semi-structured questionnaire, predominantly involving 1200 active social network users in Bangladesh. Depression, anxiety, and stress were assessed using the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21), while the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) measured insomnia severity for selected participants. Internal reliabilities were calculated with Cronbach's alpha coefficients (cut-off point 0.70). Unrelated multivariate logistic regression explored correlations among outcome errors, with the model assessing the impact of selected independent variables on mental health. The findings demonstrated that 27.8% individuals spread facts whereas 7.4% spread myths and misinformation about COVID-19 on social networks. Furthermore, 28.1% and 36.7% shared obstinate and concerning posts respectively. The prevalence of depression, anxiety and stress symptoms, ranging from mild to extremely severe, were 43.9%, 30.9%, and 23.8% respectively. However, 2.8% had severe level of insomnia. Facts, myths, tour attending, and no mask group photos were significantly associated with anxiety, and less likelihood of experiencing anxiety. Interestingly, circulating such activities on social networks had no significant association with depression, stress, or insomnia. The spread of misinformation on social media undermines any efforts to contain COVID-19 infection. The findings hugely recommend of using fact checking facilities and adaptation to the pandemic situations to maintain lower prevalence of depression, anxiety , stress and insomnia. PLOS Mental Health | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmen.
... Moreover, we provide additional insights that might be crucial to develop strategies to mitigate the spreading of misinformation online. Indeed, the World Economic Forum listed massive digital misinformation as one of the main threats for the modern society [29,30] and, despite different debunking strategies have been proposed, unsubstantiated rumors and false news keep proliferating in polarized communities emerging in online social networks [31,32,9,10,33]. ...
In online social networks, users tend to select information that adhere to their system of beliefs and to form polarized groups of like minded people. Polarization as well as its effects on online social interactions have been extensively investigated. Still, the relation between group formation and personality traits remains unclear. A better understanding of the cognitive and psychological determinants of online social dynamics might help to design more efficient communication strategies and to challenge the digital misinformation threat. In this work, we focus on users commenting posts published by US Facebook pages supporting scientific and conspiracy-like narratives, and we classify the personality traits of those users according to their online behavior. We show that different and conflicting communities are populated by users showing similar psychological profiles, and that the dominant personality model is the same in both scientific and conspiracy echo chambers. Moreover, we observe that the permanence within echo chambers slightly shapes users' psychological profiles. Our results suggest that the presence of specific personality traits in individuals lead to their considerable involvement in supporting narratives inside virtual echo chambers.
... Thankfully, much of what we know has been digitized [14,15], and the deluge of digital data, along with recent advances in the theory and modeling of social systems and networks [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23], enables quantitative explorations of our culture that were unimaginable even a decade ago. From enhanced disease surveillance [24], human mobility patterns [25,26], and the spreading of misinformation [27,28], to the universality in voting behavior [29] and emotional blogging [30,31] to name just some examples, there are virtually no limits to innovative data-driven research that lifts the veil on how we share information, how and with whom we commu- * Electronic address: matjaz.perc@uni-mb.si nicate, to where we travel, and essentially on how we live our lives. ...
Wikipedia is the largest existing knowledge repository that is growing on a genuine crowdsourcing support. While the English Wikipedia is the most extensive and the most researched one with over five million articles, comparatively little is known about the behavior and growth of the remaining 283 smaller Wikipedias, the smallest of which, Afar, has only one article. Here we use a subset of this data, consisting of 14962 different articles, each of which exists in 26 different languages, from Arabic to Ukrainian. We study the growth of Wikipedias in these languages over a time span of 15 years. We show that, while an average article follows a random path from one language to another, there exist six well-defined clusters of Wikipedias that share common growth patterns. The make-up of these clusters is remarkably robust against the method used for their determination, as we verify via four different clustering methods. Interestingly, the identified Wikipedia clusters have little correlation with language families and groups. Rather, the growth of Wikipedia across different languages is governed by different factors, ranging from similarities in culture to information literacy.
Echo Chambers and Information Cocoons have become the subject of a multifaceted academic debate-ranging from the proper conceptualization and delineation of related concepts, to questions about their prevalence and uniqueness in the online environment, to arguments about their societal impact and the role of digital technologies. This study presents a systematic literature review that analyzes the existing research to synthesize relevant findings and build the missing foundations of these phenomena. This study follows a hermeneutic analytical approach to the literature to clarify and model the distinction between information cocoons and echo chambers. Furthermore, we summarize the selected literature and identify existing knowledge gaps to outline future research opportunities.
This systematic review synthesizes research on echo chambers and filter bubbles to explore the reasons behind dissent regarding their existence, antecedents, and effects. It provides a taxonomy of conceptualizations and operationalizations, analyzing how measurement approaches and contextual factors influence outcomes. The review of 129 studies identifies variations in measurement approaches, as well as regional, political, cultural, and platform-specific biases, as key factors contributing to the lack of consensus. Studies based on homophily and computational social science methods often support the echo chamber hypothesis, while research on content exposure and broader media environments, such as surveys, tends to challenge it. Group behavior, cultural influences, instant messaging platforms, and short video platforms remain underexplored. The strong geographic focus on the United States further highlights the need for studies in multi-party systems and regions beyond the Global North. Future research should prioritize cross-platform studies, continuous algorithmic audits, and investigations into the causal links between polarization, fragmentation, and echo chambers to advance the field. This review also provides recommendations for using the EU’s Digital Services Act to enhance research in this area and conduct studies outside the US in multi-party systems. By addressing these gaps, this review contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of echo chambers, their measurement, and their societal impacts.
The inner dynamics of the multiple actors of the informations systems - i.e, T.V., newspapers, blogs, social network platforms, - play a fundamental role on the evolution of the public opinion. Coherently with the recent history of the information system (from few main stream media to the massive diffusion of socio-technical system), in this work we investigate how main stream media signed interaction might shape the opinion space. In particular we focus on how different size (in the number of media) and interaction patterns of the information system may affect collective debates and thus the opinions' distribution. We introduce a sophisticated computational model of opinion dynamics which accounts for the coexistence of media and gossip as separated mechanisms and for their feedback loops. The model accounts also for the effect of the media communication patterns by considering both the simple case where each medium mimics the behavior of the most successful one (to maximize the audience) and the case where there is polarization and thus competition among media memes. We show that plurality and competition within information sources lead to stable configurations where several and distant cultures coexist.
Multi-agent-based simulation is an arising scientific trend which is naturally provided of instruments able to cope with complex systems, in particular the socio-cognitive complex systems. In this paper, a simulation-based exploration of the effect of false information on social evaluation formation is presented. We perform simulative experiments on the Repage platform, a computational system allowing agents to communicate and acquire both direct (image) and indirect and unchecked (reputation) information. Informational cheating, when the number of liars becomes substantial, is shown to seriously affect quality achievement obtained through reputation. In the paper, after a brief introduction of the theoretical background, the hypotheses and the market scenario are presented and the simulation results are discussed with respect to the agents' decision-making process, focusing on uncertainty, false information spreading and quality of contracts.
Millions of people participate in online social media to exchange and share information. Presumably, such information exchange could improve decision making and provide instrumental benefits to the participants. However, to benefit from the information access provided by online social media, the participant will have to overcome the allure of homophily-which refers to the propensity to seek interactions with others of similar status (e.g., religion, education, income, occupation) or values (e.g., attitudes, beliefs, and aspirations). This research assesses the extent to which social media participants exhibit homophily (versus heterophily) in a unique context-virtual investment communities (VICs). We study the propensity of investors in seeking interactions with others with similar sentiments in VICs and identify theoretically important and meaningful conditions under which homophily is attenuated. To address this question, we used a discrete choice model to analyze 682,781 messages on Yahoo! Finance message boards for 29 Dow Jones stocks and assess how investors select a particular thread to respond. Our results revealed that, despite the benefits from heterophily, investors are not immune to the allure of homophily in interactions in VICs. The tendency to exhibit homophily is attenuated by an investor's experience in VICs, the amount of information in the thread, but amplified by stock volatility. The paper discusses important implications for practice.
In this work we present a thorough quantitative analysis of information consumption patterns of qualitatively different information on Facebook. Pages are categorized, according to their topics and the communities of interests they pertain to, in a) alternative information sources (diffusing topics that are neglected by science and main stream media); b) online political activism; and c) main stream media. We find similar information consumption patterns despite the very different nature of contents. Then, we classify users according to their interaction patterns among the different topics and measure how they responded to the injection of 2788 false information (parodistic imitations of alternative stories). We find that users prominently interacting with alternative information sources – i.e. more exposed to unsubstantiated claims – are more prone to interact with intentional and parodistic false claims.
Despite the enthusiastic rhetoric about the so called \emph{collective
intelligence}, conspiracy theories -- e.g. global warming induced by chemtrails
or the link between vaccines and autism -- find on the Web a natural medium for
their dissemination. Users preferentially consume information according to
their system of beliefs and the strife within users of opposite narratives may
result in heated debates. In this work we provide a genuine example of
information consumption from a sample of 1.2 million of Facebook Italian users.
We show by means of a thorough quantitative analysis that information
supporting different worldviews -- i.e. scientific and conspiracist news -- are
consumed in a comparable way by their respective users. Moreover, we measure
the effect of the exposure to 4709 evidently false information (satirical
version of conspiracy theses) and to 4502 debunking memes (information aiming
at contrasting unsubstantiated rumors) of the most polarized users of
conspiracy claims. We find that either contrasting or teasing consumers of
conspiracy narratives increases their probability to interact again with
unsubstantiated rumors.
History tells us that when you want something done you turn to a leader: right? Wrong. If you want to make a correct decision or solve a problem, large groups of people are smarter than a few experts. This brilliant and insightful book shows why the conventional wisdom is so wrong and why the theory of the wisdom of crowds has huge implications for how we run our businesses, structure our political systems and organise our society. Shrewd, meticulous and profound, The Wisdom of Crowds will change for ever the way you think about human behaviour.
Extremism and thePsychologyof Uncertainty showcases cutting-edge scientific research on the extent to which uncertainty may lead to extremism. Contributions come from leading international scholars who focus on a wide variety of forms, facets and manifestations of extremist behavior. Systematically integrates and explores the growing diversity of social psychological perspectives on the uncertainty extremism relationship .Showcases contemporary cutting edge scientific research from leading international scholars. Offers a broad perspective on extremism and focuses on a wide variety of different forms, facets and manifestations. Accessible to social and behavioral scientists, policy makers and those with a genuine interest in understanding the psychology of extremism.