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A framework for how disinformation spreads in social media

Misinformation and disinformation in social media is a prevalent phenomenon on the internet. Misinformation online takes various forms, such as fake news or misleading internet memes. Mis-/disinformation's history predates the internet, concentrated in journalism and in government propaganda and espionage.

Classification

Disinformation is distinct from misinformation. Disinformation is false information deliberately spread for deception, whereas misinformation refers to inaccuracies that stem from error.

The News Literacy Project identifies five types of misinformation:

1. Satire: A literary genre and form of humor that frequently exaggerates or mimics something in order to ridicule it. Satire, while not misinformative by nature, can turn into misinformation during its spread.
2. False context: Content, especially images, that is put in a new, false context to misrepresent what they depict.
3. Imposter content: False use of a well-known name or brand to appear as an authentic quotation.
4. Manipulated content: Content that is augmented to be more exaggerated or entirely inaccurate.
5. Fabricated content: Content that is entirely made up with no truthful origin.

Internet phenomenon

Prevalence

There was increased awareness in the prevalence of mis-/disinformation during the 2016 United States presidential election, where content from websites deemed 'untrustworthy' reached up to 40% of Americans, despite misinformation making up only 6% of overall news media.

Impacts

Health

Mis-/disinformation can frequently lead to self-endangerment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation about alternative medicine and vaccine skepticism proliferated, spurred by a general lack of health literacy proliferated. False anti-vaxx theories have led to decreased vaccination rates in industrialized nations. For example, one study surveying parents in Europe found that 12–28% of surveyed parents expressed doubts about vaccinating their children. In the United States, measles was eradicated in 2000, but sporadic outbreaks returned in 2005 and have continued ever since.

Radicalization

Mis-/disinformation can often be the first step in a path to more extreme situations like belief in conspiracy theories. Algorithmic radicalization, also known as the radicalization pipeline, is the idea that algorithms on sites such as Facebook and YouTube drive users towards progressively more extreme content.

Countermeasures

A report by the Royal Society lists potential or proposed countermeasures:

• Automated detection systems that flag or add contextto content
• The emerging anti-misinformation sector
• Provenance enhancing technology
• Research APIs
• Active bystanders (e.g. corrective commenting)
• Community moderation
• Anti-virals (e.g. limiting the number of times a message can be forwarded)
• Collective intelligence (e.g. Wikipedia)
• Trustworthy institutions and data
• Media literacy education

In general, the report recommends building resilience to scientific misinformation and a healthy online information environment and not having offending content removed. It cautions that censorship could drive misinformation and associated communities "to harder-to-address corners of the internet".