Visual misinformation on Facebook

Yang, Yunkang; Davis, Trevor; Hindman, Matthew

doi:10.1093/joc/jqac051

Cited by 25 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…Thus, our overall finding is a lower bound of the total amount of vaccineskeptical and misinformation content on Facebook. It is possible that misinformation (compared with factual information) was relatively more prevalent among non-link-based content (75). Future research should examine whether non-link content about vaccines showed different patterns than the ones found in our analysis of URLs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Quantifying the impact of misinformation and vaccine-skeptical content on Facebook

Allen,

Watts,

Rand

2024

Science

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Low uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine in the US has been widely attributed to social media misinformation. To evaluate this claim, we introduce a framework combining lab experiments (total N = 18,725), crowdsourcing, and machine learning to estimate the causal effect of 13,206 vaccine-related URLs on the vaccination intentions of US Facebook users ( N ≈ 233 million). We estimate that the impact of unflagged content that nonetheless encouraged vaccine skepticism was 46-fold greater than that of misinformation flagged by fact-checkers. Although misinformation reduced predicted vaccination intentions significantly more than unflagged vaccine content when viewed, Facebook users’ exposure to flagged content was limited. In contrast, unflagged stories highlighting rare deaths after vaccination were among Facebook’s most-viewed stories. Our work emphasizes the need to scrutinize factually accurate but potentially misleading content in addition to outright falsehoods.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Quantifying the impact of misinformation and vaccine-skeptical content on Facebook

Allen,

Watts,

Rand

2024

Science

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“…2 This approach disregards the fact that even highly problematic outlets such as Fox News in the U.S. or the German tabloid Bild were rated by NewsGuard as "generally trustworthy" (at the time); yet their reach and questionable quality make them prime vectors of misinformation (Ash et al, 2023;Bursztyn et al, 2020;DellaVigna & Kaplan, 2007;Hoewe et al, 2020;Möller et al, 2020;Simonov et al, 2022). Third, analyses have mostly focused on text-based misinformation, despite some suggestion that image-based misinformation may be particularly pervasive in the contemporary environment and thus deserves more attention (e.g., Yang et al, 2023; also see Weikmann & Lecheler, 2022).…”

Section: Misinformation Consumption Is Low and Therefore Of Minor Con...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Misinformation Must Not Be Ignored

Ecker,

Tay,

Roozenbeek

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Recent academic debate has seen the emergence of a position that misinformation is not a significant current problem. We believe that the arguments used to support this minimizing position are flawed, particularly if interpreted (e.g., by policymakers or the public) as evidence suggesting that misinformation can be safely ignored. Here, we rebut the two main misleading claims, namely that misinformation is not of substantive concern due to its low incidence and because it has no causal influence on notable political or behavioral outcomes. Through a critical review of current literature, we demonstrate that (1) misinformation incidence is non-negligible if appropriate definitions are applied and that (2) misinformation has causal impacts on important beliefs and behaviors—even if it can also be conceptualized as a symptom of deep-seated societal issues. Both scholars and policymakers are therefore encouraged to continue to take misinformation seriously.

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“…Moreover, malicious sources often vanish and reappear rapidly, adapting to the ever-changing online media environment (Bastos & Mercea, 2019). This results in frequently outdated lists and may lead to underestimating the phenomenon (Yang et al, 2023).…”

Section: Lists Of Problematic News Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Once compiled, other studies extensively reuse these lists (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Guess et al, 2019). However, as information operations constantly attempt to avoid detection and may change their social media assets due to suspension or deletion, studies based on outdated lists may underestimate the prevalence and impact of the observed phenomenon (Yang et al, 2023). This article introduces a novel—content and actor agnostic, targeting behaviors rather than individuals or specific content—workflow devised to detect, monitor, and update lists of social media actors during and beyond the peak of their activities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Workflow to Detect, Monitor, and Update Lists of Coordinated Social Media Accounts Across Time: The Case of the 2022 Italian Election

Giglietto,

Marino,

Mincigrucci

et al. 2023

Social Media + Society

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Information operations that target public opinion often exploit breaking news, crises, and elections by using coordinated social media actors to disseminate problematic content. These events often reveal the relationships between actors, prompting the creation of lists of malicious actors and news sources. However, relying on outdated lists may underestimate the prevalence and impact of such operations. This article presents a novel workflow to detect, monitor, and update lists of coordinated social media actors during and beyond peak activity periods. Using this approach, known problematic actors are constantly monitored, allowing the detection of new actors and the update of the monitored pool. The workflow was applied to the 2022 Italian snap election, leveraging previous research on coordinated inauthentic behavior during the 2018 and 2019 Italian elections. The initial list of 435 coordinated accounts was monitored, surfacing 1,022 overly shared or commented political posts, 272 coordinated links, and detecting 66 political and 554 generic coordinated accounts not previously listed. Three case studies were identified: one politically motivated, one click-economy driven, and one religiously motivated operation. The article discusses the implications of this approach, its limitations, and potential future work.

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Visual misinformation on Facebook

Cited by 25 publications

References 50 publications

Quantifying the impact of misinformation and vaccine-skeptical content on Facebook

Quantifying the impact of misinformation and vaccine-skeptical content on Facebook

Why Misinformation Must Not Be Ignored

A Workflow to Detect, Monitor, and Update Lists of Coordinated Social Media Accounts Across Time: The Case of the 2022 Italian Election

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