Echo chambers and viral misinformation: Modeling fake news as complex contagion

PloS One
Petter Törnberg

Abstract

The viral spread of digital misinformation has become so severe that the World Economic Forum considers it among the main threats to human society. This spread have been suggested to be related to the similarly problematized phenomenon of "echo chambers", but the causal nature of this relationship has proven difficult to disentangle due to the connected nature of social media, whose causality is characterized by complexity, non-linearity and emergence. This paper uses a network simulation model to study a possible relationship between echo chambers and the viral spread of misinformation. It finds an "echo chamber effect": the presence of an opinion and network polarized cluster of nodes in a network contributes to the diffusion of complex contagions, and there is a synergetic effect between opinion and network polarization on the virality of misinformation. The echo chambers effect likely comes from that they form the initial bandwagon for diffusion. These findings have implication for the study of the media logic of new social media.

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Citations

Jun 13, 2019·Current Opinion in Pediatrics·Sarah Pitts, Sara Forman
Jul 12, 2019·Current Opinion in Pediatrics·Sarah Pitts, Sara F Forman
Mar 15, 2020·Physical Review. E·Guilherme S Costa, Silvio C Ferreira
Jun 11, 2020·Proceedings. Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences·Hirokazu ShiradoNicholas A Christakis
Feb 13, 2021·International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health·Xosé López-GarcíaÁngel Vizoso
Apr 23, 2021·PloS One·Taichi MurayamaRyota Kobayashi
Jun 10, 2021·Applied Geography·Amir Masoud Forati, Rina Ghose
Oct 12, 2021·PloS One·Petter TörnbergSven Banisch
Jul 16, 2021·Perspectives on Psychological Science : a Journal of the Association for Psychological Science·Cédric BataillerBertram Gawronski

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