TY - JOUR
T1 - Collective attention in the age of (mis)information
AU - Mocanu, Delia
AU - Rossi, Luca
AU - Zhang, Qian
AU - Karsai, Marton
AU - Quattrociocchi, Walter
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
PY - 2015/10
Y1 - 2015/10
N2 - In this work we study, on a sample of 2.3million individuals, how Facebook users consumed different information at the edge of political discussion and news during the last Italian electoral competition. 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 show that attention patterns are similar despite the different qualitative nature of the information, meaning that unsubstantiated claims (mainly conspiracy theories) reverberate for as long as other information. Finally, we classify users according to their interaction patterns among the different topics and measure how they responded to the injection of 2788 false information. Our analysis reveals that users which are prominently interacting with conspiracists information sources are more prone to interact with intentional false claims.
AB - In this work we study, on a sample of 2.3million individuals, how Facebook users consumed different information at the edge of political discussion and news during the last Italian electoral competition. 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 show that attention patterns are similar despite the different qualitative nature of the information, meaning that unsubstantiated claims (mainly conspiracy theories) reverberate for as long as other information. Finally, we classify users according to their interaction patterns among the different topics and measure how they responded to the injection of 2788 false information. Our analysis reveals that users which are prominently interacting with conspiracists information sources are more prone to interact with intentional false claims.
KW - Collective narratives
KW - Misinformation
KW - Online social network
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84955180625&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.chb.2015.01.024
DO - 10.1016/j.chb.2015.01.024
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84955180625
SN - 0747-5632
VL - 51
SP - 1198
EP - 1204
JO - Computers in Human Behavior
JF - Computers in Human Behavior
ER -