Related papers: Mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and misinform…
COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy has increased concerns about vaccine uptake required to overcome the pandemic and protect public health. A critical factor associated with anti-vaccine attitudes is the information shared on social media. In this…
The large availability of user provided contents on online social media facilitates people aggregation around common interests, worldviews and narratives. However, in spite of the enthusiastic rhetoric about the so called {\em wisdom of…
Misinformation promotes distrust in science, undermines public health, and may drive civil unrest. Vaccine misinformation, in particular, has stalled efforts to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting social media platforms' attempts to…
Rumors and conspiracy theories thrive in environments of low confidence and low trust. Consequently, it is not surprising that ones related to the Covid-19 pandemic are proliferating given the lack of any authoritative scientific consensus…
Collective human distrust (and its associated mis-disinformation) is one of the most complex phenomena of our time. e.g. distrust of medical expertise, or climate change science, or democratic election outcomes, and even distrust of…
Social media are pervaded by unsubstantiated or untruthful rumors, that contribute to the alarming phenomenon of misinformation. The widespread presence of a heterogeneous mass of information sources may affect the mechanisms behind the…
The global spread of the novel coronavirus is affected by the spread of related misinformation -- the so-called COVID-19 Infodemic -- that makes populations more vulnerable to the disease through resistance to mitigation efforts. Here we…
Background: The COVID-19 outbreak has left many people isolated within their homes; these people are turning to social media for news and social connection, which leaves them vulnerable to believing and sharing misinformation.…
Despite their playful purpose social media changed the way users access information, debate, and form their opinions. Recent studies, indeed, showed that users online tend to promote their favored narratives and thus to form polarized…
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…
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 {\em disintermediation} weakened consensus on social relevant issues in favor of…
The COVID-19 pandemic has been the subject of a vast amount of misinformation, particularly in digital information environments, and major social media platforms recently publicized some of the countermeasures they are adopting. This…
According to the World Economic Forum, the diffusion of unsubstantiated rumors on online social media is one of the main threats for our society. The disintermediated paradigm of content production and consumption on online social media…
As the number and the diversity of news outlets on the Web grow, so does the opportunity for "alternative" sources of information to emerge. Using large social networks like Twitter and Facebook, misleading, false, or agenda-driven…
Research into COVID-19 has been rapidly evolving since the onset of the pandemic. This occasionally results in contradictory recommendations by credible sources of scientific opinion, public health authorities, and medical professionals. In…
Previous work suggests that people's preference for different kinds of information depends on more than just accuracy. This could happen because the messages contained within different pieces of information may either be well-liked or…
Conventional preventive measures during pandemic include social distancing and lockdown. Such measures in the time of social media brought about a new set of challenges - vulnerability to the toxic impact of online misinformation is high. A…
There has been concern about the proliferation of the "QAnon" conspiracy theory on Facebook, but little is known about how its misleading narrative propagated on the world's largest social media platform. Thus, the present research analyzed…
The proliferation of online misinformation has emerged as one of the biggest threats to society. Considerable efforts have focused on building misinformation detection models, still the perils of misinformation remain abound. Mitigating…
Anti-vaccination views pervade online social media, fueling distrust in scientific expertise and increasing vaccine-hesitant individuals. While previous studies focused on specific countries, the COVID-19 pandemic brought the vaccination…