Related papers: Partisan Asymmetries in Exposure to Misinformation
We analyze the relationship between partisanship, echo chambers, and vulnerability to online misinformation by studying news sharing behavior on Twitter. While our results confirm prior findings that online misinformation sharing is…
The novel coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage communities across the US. Opinion surveys identified importance of political ideology in shaping perceptions of the pandemic and compliance with preventive measures. Here, we use social…
Vaccine hesitancy has been recognized as a major global health threat. Having access to any type of information in social media has been suggested as a potential powerful influence factor to hesitancy. Recent studies in other fields than…
An important challenge in the process of tracking and detecting the dissemination of misinformation is to understand the political gap between people that engage with the so called "fake news". A possible factor responsible for this gap is…
The COVID-19 pandemic brought upon a massive wave of disinformation, exacerbating polarization in the increasingly divided landscape of online discourse. In this context, popular social media users play a major role, as they have the…
Background: Social media chatter in 2020 has been largely dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Existing research shows that COVID-19 discourse is highly politicized, with political preferences linked to beliefs and disbeliefs about the…
Misinformation entails the dissemination of falsehoods that leads to the slow fracturing of society via decreased trust in democratic processes, institutions, and science. The public has grown aware of the role of social media as a…
Political polarization appears to be on the rise, as measured by voting behavior, general affect towards opposing partisans and their parties, and contents posted and consumed online. Research over the years has focused on the role of the…
Social media have great potential to support diverse information sharing, but there is widespread concern that platforms like Twitter do not result in communication between those who hold contradictory viewpoints. Because users can choose…
As civil discourse increasingly takes place online, misinformation and the polarization of news shared in online communities have become ever more relevant concerns with real world harms across our society. Studying online news sharing at…
Social media platforms have had considerable impact on the real world especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Misinformation related to Covid-19 might have caused significant impact on the population specifically due to its association…
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a significant rise in the spread of misinformation on online platforms such as Twitter. Oftentimes this growth is blamed on the idea of the "echo chamber." However, the behavior said to…
The spread of inaccurate and misleading information may alter behaviours and complicate crisis management, especially during an emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper aims to investigate information diffusion during the COVID-19…
Politicians with large media visibility and social media audiences have a significant influence on public discourse. Consequently, their dissemination of misinformation can have profound implications for society. This study investigated the…
Members of different political groups not only disagree about issues but also dislike and distrust each other. While social media can amplify this emotional divide -- called affective polarization by political scientists -- there is a lack…
The World Health Organization have emphasised that misinformation - spreading rapidly through social media - poses a serious threat to the COVID-19 response. Drawing from theories of health perception and cognitive load, we develop and test…
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…
Public health measures were among the most polarizing topics debated online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of the discussion surrounded specific events, such as when and which particular interventions came into practise. In this work,…
US voters shared large volumes of polarizing political news and information in the form of links to content from Russian, WikiLeaks and junk news sources. Was this low quality political information distributed evenly around the country, or…
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, fears grew that making vaccination a political (instead of public health) issue may impact the efficacy of this life-saving intervention, spurring the spread of vaccine-hesitant content. In this…