Bessi, Alessandro and Coletto, Mauro and Davidescu, George Alexandru and Scala, Antonio and Quattrociocchi, Walter
Misinformation in the loop: the emergence of
narratives in Online Social Networks.
In: XI Conference of the Italian Chapter of AIS Digital Innovation and Inclusive Knowledge in Times of Change, 21-22 November 2014, Genova, Italy
pp. 1-14.
ISBN 978-88-6685-008-3.
(2014)
Abstract
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
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