Political rumoring on Twitter during the 2012 US presidential election: Rumor diffusion and correction
Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: Social media can be a double-edged sword for political misinformation, either a conduit propagating false rumors through a large population or an effective tool to challenge misinformation. To understand this phenomenon, we tracked a comprehensive collection of political rumors on Twitter during the 2012 US presidential election campaign, analyzing a large set of rumor tweets ( n = 330,538). We found that Twitter helped rumor spreaders circulate false information within homophilous follower networks, but seldom functioned as a self-correcting marketplace of ideas. Rumor spreaders formed strong partisan structures in which core groups of users selectively transmitted negative rumors about opposing candidates. Yet, rumor rejecters neither formed a sizable community nor exhibited a partisan structure. While in general rumors resisted debunking by professional fact-checking sites (e.g. Snopes), this was less true of rumors originating with satirical sources.
Source: New Media & Society
Authors: Jieun Shin, Lian Jian, Kevin Driscoll, François Bar
Institutions: University of Southern California, Microsoft (United States)
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2295876872