%0 Conference Paper
%A Bessi, Alessandro
%A Coletto, Mauro
%A Davidescu, George Alexandru
%A Scala, Antonio
%A Quattrociocchi, Walter
%B XI Conference of the Italian Chapter of AIS Digital Innovation and Inclusive Knowledge in Times of Change
%C Genova, Italy
%D 2014
%F eprints:3488
%K misinformation, collective narratives, crowd dynamics, information spreading.
%P 1-14
%T Misinformation in the loop: the emergence of  narratives in Online Social Networks
%U http://eprints.imtlucca.it/3488/
%X The interlink between information and belief formation and  revision is a fundamental aspect of social dynamics. The growth of knowledge  fostered by a hyper-connected world together with the unprecedented  acceleration of scientific progress has exposed individuals, governments  and countries to an increasing level of complexity to explain  reality and its phenomena. Despite the enthusiastic rhetoric about the so  called collective intelligence, conspiracy theories and other unsubstantiated  claims find on the Web a natural medium for their diffusion. Cases  in which these kinds of false information are used in political debates  are far from unimaginable. In this work, we study the behavior of users  supporting different (and opposite) worldviews – i.e. scientific and conspiracist  thinking – that commented the posts of the Facebook page  of a large italian political party that advocates direct democracy and  e-Participation. We find that users supporting different narratives consume  political information in a similar way. Moreover, by analyzing the  composition of users active on the page in terms of commenting activity,  we notice that almost one fifth of them is represented by polarized consumers  of conspiracy stories, and those are able to generate almost one  third of total comments to the posts of the page
%Z Published in "itAIS proceedings - CeRSI"