scholarly journals Linguistic drivers of misinformation diffusion on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giandomenico Di Domenico ◽  
Annamaria Tuan ◽  
Marco Visentin
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Social Media ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
Textual Cues ◽  
Twitter Users

AbstractIn the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedent amounts of fake news and hoax spread on social media. In particular, conspiracy theories argued on the effect of specific new technologies like 5G and misinformation tarnished the reputation of brands like Huawei. Language plays a crucial role in understanding the motivational determinants of social media users in sharing misinformation, as people extract meaning from information based on their discursive resources and their skillset. In this paper, we analyze textual and non-textual cues from a panel of 4923 tweets containing the hashtags #5G and #Huawei during the first week of May 2020, when several countries were still adopting lockdown measures, to determine whether or not a tweet is retweeted and, if so, how much it is retweeted. Overall, through traditional logistic regression and machine learning, we found different effects of the textual and non-textual cues on the retweeting of a tweet and on its ability to accumulate retweets. In particular, the presence of misinformation plays an interesting role in spreading the tweet on the network. More importantly, the relative influence of the cues suggests that Twitter users actually read a tweet but not necessarily they understand or critically evaluate it before deciding to share it on the social media platform.

Fake or real news? Understanding the gratifications and personality traits of individuals sharing fake news on social media platforms

2022 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brinda Sampat ◽  
Sahil Raj
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Personality Traits ◽  
Information Sharing ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
News Sharing

Purpose“Fake news” or misinformation sharing using social media sites into public discourse or politics has increased dramatically, over the last few years, especially in the current COVID-19 pandemic causing concern. However, this phenomenon is inadequately researched. This study examines fake news sharing with the lens of stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory, uses and gratification theory (UGT) and big five personality traits (BFPT) theory to understand the motivations for sharing fake news and the personality traits that do so. The stimuli in the model comprise gratifications (pass time, entertainment, socialization, information sharing and information seeking) and personality traits (agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, openness and neuroticism). The feeling of authenticating or instantly sharing news is the organism leading to sharing fake news, which forms the response in the study.Design/methodology/approachThe conceptual model was tested by the data collected from a sample of 221 social media users in India. The data were analyzed with partial least squares structural equation modeling to determine the effects of UGT and personality traits on fake news sharing. The moderating role of the platform WhatsApp or Facebook was studied.Findings The results suggest that pass time, information sharing and socialization gratifications lead to instant sharing news on social media platforms. Individuals who exhibit extraversion, neuroticism and openness share news on social media platforms instantly. In contrast, agreeableness and conscientiousness personality traits lead to authentication news before sharing on the social media platform.Originality/value This study contributes to social media literature by identifying the user gratifications and personality traits that lead to sharing fake news on social media platforms. Furthermore, the study also sheds light on the moderating influence of the choice of the social media platform for fake news sharing.

scholarly journals Social network analysis of climate change discussion on Twitter during COP21

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brittany E. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
The Public ◽  
Climate Change Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
Twitter Users

The public is increasingly relying on Twitter for climate change information; however, to date, this social media platform is poorly understood in terms of how climate change information is shared. This study evaluates discussions on Twitter during the 2015 United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP21) to elucidate the social media platform’s role in communicating climate change information. For a five-day period, links embedded in a sample of tweets containing “#climatechange” were characterized, Twitter users were classified by the types of links they typically shared, and their degree centralities (the number of connections for each user) were measured. There was little skeptical content across all user categories; however, news links were more likely than non-news to contain content that is skeptical of climate change. Users who typically shared skeptical news links and users who typically shared non-skeptical non-news links exhibited a relatively high number of connections with other users.

scholarly journals Countering the New Media Podia: Youth and ‘Fake News’ in Kenya

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 8-12
Author(s):  
Oloo Ong’ong’a
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Information Age ◽  
Fake News ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
The Media

The rise of fake news into the new media platform has raised significant concern in Africa and Kenya in recent years. The new media has embedded itself with fake news, which sometimes has led to the misunderstanding and misinformation of particular events that might be of the public interest. The general public, policymakers, and scholars, as well as the media, have found this as a very challenging issue. The upsurge of the new technologies, mainly social media, has posed challenges as youth immerse themselves in utilizing these social media for their own benefits. This is coupled with the creation and spreading of fake news, which sometimes when it goes viral; they lead to stress, panic and uncertainty to the individuals that come across them. The ability of users’ exceptional capacity to produce, reproduce, and distribute their information to a broad audience makes social media, an essential tool in the information age. The article critically reviews the literature on fake news and recommends for media literacy, strengthening the legal structures and use of sophisticated technologies as a strategy to fight fake news in the social media in Kenya.

scholarly journals Twitter Spam Detection using Pre-trained Model

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 10620-10623
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Spam Detection ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
Machine Learning Model ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
E Mail ◽  
Day By Day

In the age of technology social media platform is becoming a great companion for expressing the thoughts, information, and opinion. It became the powerful tool for every person who wants to expand their networks of people beyond the physical boundation. We are living at that age where various categories of social media platform available according to work needed, it may be Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp or Twitter. We are focusing our work on Twitter, It is also known as microblogging site which provides service to express the opinion in limited words. As the popularity of twitter is growing day by day users are joining the platform very fast, as it happens another side many spammers are also taking undue advantages of this platform, for any social media platform it is very important to maintain the secure, safer and trustworthy environment for their legitimate users. Twitter spams are more harmful than e-mail spam because of their higher clickthrough rate, as in the social network if someone trusted some spam a genuine post than it is higher chance that the persons in the network might also trust on that spam post and may click on it. There are plenty of methods available to handle the task of twitter spam detection problem, we are solving this problem of twitter spam at tweet level.Pre-trained models are some breakthrough in the journey of machine learning and natural language processing after their advancement they are of great help. Here we are using Bidirectional Encoder Representation from Transformer (BERT) model to solve the problem as our task is to solve the problem of imbalance dataset as well as the multilingual dataset, BERT makes a clear distinction in this type of task, the main advantage of this type’s model is that we don’t have to collect millions of data for better performance of the machine learning model.

scholarly journals Social network analysis of climate change discussion on Twitter during COP21

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brittany E. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
The Public ◽  
Climate Change Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
Twitter Users

The public is increasingly relying on Twitter for climate change information; however, to date, this social media platform is poorly understood in terms of how climate change information is shared. This study evaluates discussions on Twitter during the 2015 United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP21) to elucidate the social media platform’s role in communicating climate change information. For a five-day period, links embedded in a sample of tweets containing “#climatechange” were characterized, Twitter users were classified by the types of links they typically shared, and their degree centralities (the number of connections for each user) were measured. There was little skeptical content across all user categories; however, news links were more likely than non-news to contain content that is skeptical of climate change. Users who typically shared skeptical news links and users who typically shared non-skeptical non-news links exhibited a relatively high number of connections with other users.

#GomorraLaSerie: Converging audience and enhanced authorship on twenty-first-century Italian screens

Modern Italy ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 335-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierluigi Erbaggio
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Young People ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Organised Crime ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
Screen Viewing ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Platform

Based on Roberto Saviano's book Gomorra (2006), production of the TV series Gomorra – La serie (2014) was met with scepticism as many feared it would glamorise organised crime and, consequently, attract young people toward Camorra affiliation. The series' bleak portrayal of criminals and criminality was offered as a response to such concerns. Despite the preoccupations, Gomorra – La serie was hugely successful and, because of its quality, was sold to other countries. In Italy, the series' success can be measured by the popularity of its Twitter hashtag #GomorraLaSerie. Engaged with Henry Jenkins' theories of media convergence and based on a corpus of tweets bearing this official hashtag, this article proposes a quantitative analysis and advances conclusions regarding the Italian TV audience and second-screen viewing practices. Additionally, through a qualitative study of Saviano's tweets about the series, it examines the writer's use of the social media platform as a tool of narrative continuity. Finally, the article highlights a few examples of fan-generated media and concludes with remarks regarding Saviano's problematic position at the centre of a transmedia object.

Getting acquainted with social networks and apps: talking about TikTok

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katie Elson Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
Information Professionals

Purpose This paper aims to provide information and promote discussion around the social media platform TikTok. Design/methodology/approach Research, literature review. Findings Libraries and library and information professionals should be aware of the potential of TikTok for engagement and information sharing. Originality/value Adds to the research on the social media platform TikTok.

scholarly journals Habib Husein Jafar Al-Hadar’s Da’wa Content Commodification on Youtube

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Akhmad Roja Badrus Zaman ◽  
Mahin Muqaddam Assarwani
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Young Person ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
Virtual Ethnography ◽  
The Social ◽  
People’S Perception ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Selection Of

Advances in technology and information provide new opportunities for preachers to be able to take part in spreading Islamic teachings through various social media platforms. One of the preachers who took the role to preach through social media was Habib Husein Jafar al-Hadar. This article examines Habib Husein Jafar’s missionary activities on the social media platform he uses, Youtube. The researcher analyzes the data by observing virtually and visually (virtual ethnography) on the da’wa content displayed by Habib Husein Jafar through Youtube. The study shows that: 1) the attention to the spiritual enlightenment efforts of the younger generation is the basis of the selection of the social media platform Youtube - because based on previous research, the users of this social media platform are 18-29 years of age; 2) starting from the da’wa consumers who are primarily young people, the content they present is suitable to their needs and lifestyle and 3) by using the concept of the circuit of culture analysis, Habib Husein Jafar in various ranges can reconstruct people’s perception of one’s definition of holiness. It is not limited based on normative appearance - cloaked and sacrificed, for example - but more on the substantive side, namely by behaving and having knowledgeable skills. With the variety of content, he could visualize himself as a pious young man by not abandoning his social status as a young person.

scholarly journals Applying Educational Data Mining to Explore Viewing Behaviors and Performance With Flipped Classrooms on the Social Media Platform Facebook

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-Sheng Su ◽  
Chin-Feng Lai
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Educational Data Mining ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Learning Materials ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
The Social ◽  
Flipped Classrooms ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Experimental Group

In recent years, learning materials have gradually been applied to flipped classrooms. Teachers share learning materials, and students can preview the learning materials before class. During class, the teacher can discuss students' questions from their notes from previewing the learning materials. The social media platform Facebook provides access to learning materials and diversified interactions, such as sharing knowledge, annotating learning materials, and establishing common objectives. Previous studies have explored the effect of flipped classrooms on students' learning engagement, attitudes, and performance. In this paper, we apply educational data mining to explore the relationship between students' viewing behaviors in accessing learning materials and their performance in flipped classrooms. The participants are classified into an experimental group and a control group to engage in flipped classroom activities. The experimental group uses the social media platform Facebook for flipped learning, and the control group uses a learning management system for flipped learning. The results show that there is a significant difference in the learning performance between the two groups, with the average score of the experimental group being higher than that of the control group. Furthermore, we find that the viewing behaviors and performance of the students within the experimental group differ significantly.

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