scholarly journals Introduction: The Social and Political Dynamic of Conspiracy Theories, Rumours, Fake News, and Belief Narratives

2017 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 7-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eda Kalmre ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Fake News ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Social ◽  
Belief Narratives

Political psychology in the digital (mis)information age: A model of news belief and sharing

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Joseph Van Bavel ◽  
Elizabeth Ann Harris ◽  
Philip Pärnamets ◽  
Steve Rathje ◽  
Kimberly Doell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Information Age ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
Integrative Model ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Social

The spread of misinformation, including “fake news,” propaganda, and conspiracy theories, represents a serious threat to society, as it has the potential to alter beliefs, behavior, and policy. Research is beginning to disentangle how and why misinformation is spread and identify processes that contribute to this social problem. We propose an integrative model to understand the social, political, and cognitive psychology risk factors that underlie the spread of misinformation and highlight strategies that might be effective in mitigating this problem. However, the spread of misinformation is a rapidly growing and evolving problem; thus scholars need to identify and test novel solutions, and work with policy makers to evaluate and deploy these solutions. Hence, we provide a roadmap for future research to identify where scholars should invest their energy in order to have the greatest overall impact.

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.

scholarly journals MISINFORMATION AND DISINFORMATION DURING COVID-19: THE EFFECTS AND THE RELEVANT LAWS IN MALAYSIA

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (21) ◽  
pp. 202-209
Author(s):  
Hanis Wahed
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
Fake News ◽  
False Information ◽  
Legal Research ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Use Of Social Media

Misinformation and disinformation are increasing as fast as the spreading of Coronavirus disease 2019 or Covid-19. Both happen as a result of the use of social media and technologies. The act of spreading fake news, rumors, and conspiracy theories or giving false information is considered an offence under the laws of Malaysia. However, the number of cases that relate to this offence has been increasing especially during the current pandemic. Thus, this article discusses the effects of the offence and the efforts taken in preventing it from happening. The focus is on the laws that are applicable in the situation. The methodology used is socio-legal research that involves analysing the laws that are applicable in the social situation. The article suggests that further research should be carried out on the applicable laws and amendments should be made to the relevant laws in order to combat the commission of the offence in the future. It is hoped that the suggestion will assist the authority to add more measures in combatting the pandemic and for the public to be more cautious of committing misinformation and disinformation.

THE USE OF CRITICAL THINKING AGAINST FAKE NEWS

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra-Niculina Babii
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Informal Logic ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
The Social ◽  
Legal Sanctions ◽  
The One

The digital era has determined a very easy creation and propagation of fake news. As a consequence, it has become harder for people to fight this malicious phenomenon. However, the only weapon that can have results in this informational war is critical thinking. But who should use it? The creators of fake news that do this for different reasons? The social platforms that allow the circulation of fake news with ease? Mass media which does not always verify with much attention and rigour the information they spread? The Governments that should apply legal sanctions? Or the consumer that receives all the fake news, him being the final target? Even if critical thinking would be useful for every actor on fake news’ stage, the one who needs it the most is the consumer. This comes together with the big responsibility placed on his shoulders. Even if others are creating and spreading disinformation, the consumer must be aware and be careful with the information he encounters on a daily basis. He should use his reasoning and he should not believe everything just because it is on the Internet. How can he do that? Critical thinking seems to be a quite difficult tool to use, especially for non-specialized individuals. This paper’s aim is to propose a simplified model of critical thinking that can contribute to detecting fake news with the help of people’s self judgement. The model is based on theories from Informal Logic considering the structure of arguments and on Critical Discourse Analysis theories concerning the patterns found in the content of the information.

scholarly journals Automated Classification of Fake News Spreaders to Break the Misinformation Chain

Information ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 248
Author(s):  
Simone Leonardi ◽  
Giuseppe Rizzo ◽  
Maurizio Morisio
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Network Architecture ◽  
Diffusion Mechanism ◽  
Automated Classification ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Neural Network Architecture ◽  
User Classification ◽  
The Social ◽  
Network Topologies

In social media, users are spreading misinformation easily and without fact checking. In principle, they do not have a malicious intent, but their sharing leads to a socially dangerous diffusion mechanism. The motivations behind this behavior have been linked to a wide variety of social and personal outcomes, but these users are not easily identified. The existing solutions show how the analysis of linguistic signals in social media posts combined with the exploration of network topologies are effective in this field. These applications have some limitations such as focusing solely on the fake news shared and not understanding the typology of the user spreading them. In this paper, we propose a computational approach to extract features from the social media posts of these users to recognize who is a fake news spreader for a given topic. Thanks to the CoAID dataset, we start the analysis with 300 K users engaged on an online micro-blogging platform; then, we enriched the dataset by extending it to a collection of more than 1 M share actions and their associated posts on the platform. The proposed approach processes a batch of Twitter posts authored by users of the CoAID dataset and turns them into a high-dimensional matrix of features, which are then exploited by a deep neural network architecture based on transformers to perform user classification. We prove the effectiveness of our work by comparing the precision, recall, and f1 score of our model with different configurations and with a baseline classifier. We obtained an f1 score of 0.8076, obtaining an improvement from the state-of-the-art by 4%.

Influence of conspiracy theories, misinformation and knowledge on public adoption of Nigerian government’s COVID-19 containment policies

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ifeoma Theresa Amobi ◽  
Lambe Kayode Mustapha ◽  
Lilian Adaora Udodi ◽  
Oluwakemi Akinuliola-Aweda ◽  
Mogbonjubade Esther Adesulure ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Group Discussion ◽  
Opinion Leaders ◽  
Safety Measures ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Social ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Media Space ◽  
Analyse Data ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Collective Influence

This study examined the individual and collective influence of conspiracy theories, misinformation and knowledge revolving around COVID-19, on public adoption of the Nigerian government’s containment policies. The study adopted the Survey, and Focus Group Discussion (FGD) methods. For the survey, a sample of 466 respondents were drawn from Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, while 24 participants were selected for the FGD. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and thematic approach were used to analyse data generated from the study. Results revealed a COVID-19 conspiratorial thinking among survey respondents and FGD participants, who were also familiar with the orgy of unbridled dissemination of misinformation and conspiracy theories in the social media space. Majority of respondents were knowledgeable about government’s COVID-19 containment policies and were practicing the recommended safety measures. Their decision was influenced by trust in opinion leaders, especially family members and medical experts.

scholarly journals Loodus tuleb tagasi: delfiinid ja saurused. Libauudistest, photoshop-muistenditest ja meemidest koroonakarantiini ajal

Mäetagused ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 79 ◽  
pp. 167-184
Author(s):  
Eda Kalmre ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Coping Strategies ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fake News ◽  
The Social ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
Positive Effect

The article follows the narrative trend initiated by the social media posts and fake news during the first months of the corona quarantine, which claims that the decrease of contamination due to the quarantine has a positive effect on the environment and nature recovery. The author describes the context of the topic and follows the changes in the rhetoric through different genres, discussing the ways in which a picture can tell a truthful story. What is the relation between the context, truth, and rhetoric? This material spread globally, yet it was also readily “translated” into the Estonian context, and – what is very characteristic of the entire pandemic material – when approaching this material, truthful and fabricated texts, photos, and videos were combined. From the folkloristic point of view, these rumours in the form of fake news, first presented in the function of a tall tale and further following the sliding truth scale of legends, constitute a part of coping strategies, so-called crisis humour, yet, on the other hand, also a belief story presenting positive imagery, which surrounds the mainly apocalyptically perceived pandemic period and interprets the human existence on a wider scale. Even if these fake news and memes have no truth value, they communicate an idea – nature recovers – and definitely offer hope and a feeling of well-being.

scholarly journals Social media and the spread of COVID-19 conspiracy theories in Nigeria

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 432-437
Author(s):  
Sarah Gambo ◽  
Woyopwa Shem
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Research Interest ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Outbreak ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Subject ◽  
National Orientation ◽  
And Control

Background: Amidst the recent outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, there seems to be an avalanche of conspiracy theories that abound on social media platforms, and this subject attracted a lot of research interest. This study aimed to examine the "social media and the spread Covid-19 conspiracy theories in Nigeria" in light of the above.  Methods: The study adopted a qualitative design in order to explore the subject matter thoroughly. Thirty-five participants were conveniently sampled, and interviews were conducted to retrieved data from the participants. Results: Findings of this study revealed that there is a prevalence of conspiracy theories that have saturated social media ever since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was also found that ignorance, religious fanaticism, lack of censorship, and insufficient counter information on social media platforms are some of the possible factors that aided the spread of Covid-19 conspiracy theories among Nigerian social media users. Conclusion: This study recommends, among other things, that there is a swift need to curtail the spread of conspiracy theories through consistent dissemination of counter-information by both individuals and agencies like the National Orientation Agency (NOA) and the Nigerian Centre for Disease and Control (NCDC).

scholarly journals Fake news and unfunded beliefs in the post-truth age

Universitas ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 87-108
Author(s):  
Víctor Castillo-Riquelme ◽  
Patricio Hermosilla-Urrea ◽  
Juan P. Poblete-Tiznado ◽  
Christian Durán-Anabalón
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Female Gender ◽  
Male Gender ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
The Social ◽  
Paranormal Beliefs ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Relationship

The dissemination of fake news embodies a pressing problem for democracy that is exacerbated by theubiquity of information available on the Internet and by the exploitation of those who, appealing to theemotionality of audiences, have capitalized on the injection of falsehoods into the social fabric. In thisstudy, through a cross-sectional, correlational and non-experimental design, the relationship betweencredibility in the face of fake news and some types of dysfunctional thoughts was explored in a sampleof Chilean university students. The results reveal that greater credibility in fake news is associated withhigher scores of magical, esoteric and naively optimistic thinking, beliefs that would be the meetingpoint for a series of cognitive biases that operate in the processing of information. The highest correlationis found with the paranormal beliefs facet and, particularly, with ideas about the laws of mentalattraction, telepathy and clairvoyance. Significant differences were also found in credibility in fake newsas a function of the gender of the participants, with the female gender scoring higher on average thanthe male gender. These findings highlight the need to promote critical thinking, skepticism and scientificattitude in all segments of society.

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