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July 26, 2017 by Gary Price

Research Article: “The Spread of Fake News by Social Bots” (Preprint)

July 26, 2017 by Gary Price

The following article was recently posted on arXiv.
Title
The Spread of Fake News by Social Bots
Authors
Chengcheng Shao
Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia
Onur Varol
Alessandro Flammini
Filippo Menczer
Affiliation: Indiana University (All Authors)
Source
via arXiv
June 24, 2017
Abstract

The massive spread of fake news has been identified as a major global risk and has been alleged to influence elections and threaten democracies.
Communication, cognitive, social, and computer scientists are engaged in efforts to study the complex causes for the viral diffusion of digital misinformation and to develop solutions, while search and social media platforms are beginning to deploy countermeasures. However, to date,
these efforts have been mainly informed by anecdotal evidence rather than systematic data.
Here we analyze 14 million messages spreading 400 thousand claims on Twitter during and following the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and election. We find evidence that social bots play a key role in the spread of fake news. Accounts that actively spread misinformation are significantly more likely to be bots.
Automated accounts are particularly active in the early spreading phases of viral claims, and tend to target influential users. Humans are vulnerable to this manipulation, retweeting bots who post false news. Successful sources of false and biased claims are heavily supported by social bots. These results suggests that curbing social bots may be an effective strategy for mitigating the spread of online misinformation.

Direct to Full Text Article
16 pages; PDF.

Filed under: Data Files, News, Patrons and Users

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About Gary Price

Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.

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