Related papers: Global Patterns of Viral Content on WhatsApp
Misinformation/disinformation about COVID-19 has been rampant on social media around the world. In this study, we investigate COVID-19 misinformation/ disinformation on social media in multiple languages - Farsi (Persian), Chinese, and…
In recent years, reports and anecdotal evidence pointing at the role of WhatsApp in a variety of events, ranging from elections to collective violence, have emerged. While academic research should examine the validity of these claims,…
As people rely on social media as their primary sources of news, the spread of misinformation has become a significant concern. In this large-scale study of news in social media we analyze eleven million posts and investigate propagation…
Misinformation on social media presents a major threat to modern societies. While previous research has analyzed the virality across true and false social media posts, not every misleading post is necessarily equally viral. Rather,…
WhatsApp has introduced a novel avenue for smartphone users to engage with and disseminate news stories. The convenience of forming interest-based groups and seamlessly sharing content has rendered WhatsApp susceptible to the exploitation…
WhatsApp tiplines, first launched in 2019 to combat misinformation, enable users to interact with fact-checkers to verify misleading content. This study analyzes 580 unique claims (tips) from 451 users, covering both high-resource languages…
With the increasing use of smartphones, instant messaging platforms turned into important communication tools. According to WhatsApp, more than 100 billion messages are sent each day on the app. Communication on these platforms has allowed…
WeChat is a mobile messaging application that has 549 million active users as of Q1 2015, and "WeChat Moments" (WM) serves its social-networking function that allows users to post/share links of web pages. WM differs from the other social…
Social media users who report content are key allies in the management of online misinformation, however, no research has been conducted yet to understand their role and the different trends underlying their reporting activity. We suggest…
We introduce WhaVax, a new expert-annotated dataset of vaccine-related WhatsApp messages collected from large Brazilian public groups spanning multiple pandemic years. The dataset was constructed through a rigorous, carefully designed…
This study analyzes misinformation from WhatsApp, Twitter, and Kwai during the 2022 Brazilian general election. Given the democratic importance of accurate information during elections, multiple fact-checking organizations collaborated to…
Instant messaging platforms such as Telegram became one of the main means of communication used by people all over the world. Most of them are home of several groups and channels that connect thousands of people focused on political topics.…
Telegram is increasingly used for political communication and news dissemination, yet evidence of coordinated content sharing remains limited. We test whether mainstream global news channels coordinate when reporting on Venezuela during…
In recent years, malicious information had an explosive growth in social media, with serious social and political backlashes. Recent important studies, featuring large-scale analyses, have produced deeper knowledge about this phenomenon,…
Although Telegram is currently one of the most popular instant messaging apps in the world, previous studies have mainly focused on analysing discussions on specific angles and topics. In this paper, we present a broad analysis of publicly…
The spreading of unsubstantiated rumors on online social networks (OSN) either unintentionally or intentionally (e.g., for political reasons or even trolling) can have serious consequences such as in the recent case of rumors about Ebola…
Although misinformation tends to spread online, it can have serious real-world consequences. In order to develop automated tools to detect and mitigate the impact of misinformation, researchers must leverage algorithms that can adapt to the…
Social media has been on the vanguard of political information diffusion in the 21st century. Most studies that look into disinformation, political influence and fake-news focus on mainstream social media platforms. This has inevitably made…
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…
Fake news and misinformation spread in developing countries as fast as they do in developed countries with increasing penetration of the internet and social media. However, fighting misinformation is more difficult in developing countries…