MIT study published in Science
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Empirical study demonstrating that false information spreads faster and wider than truth on social media, with stronger emotional resonance; relevant to understanding information hazards, AI-generated misinformation risks, and the challenges of deploying AI systems in information ecosystems.
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This MIT study analyzed ~126,000 rumors spread across Twitter from 2006-2017 by ~3 million users to understand how false news propagates. The research found that false news spreads significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than true news across all information categories, with the effect most pronounced for political misinformation. False news was more novel than true news and elicited stronger emotional responses (fear, disgust, surprise), while true news inspired trust and sadness. Notably, humans rather than bots were responsible for the differential spread, contradicting assumptions about automated amplification of falsehoods.
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# The spread of true and false news online Authors: Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, Sinan Aral Journal: Science Published: 2018-03-09 DOI: 10.1126/science.aap9559 ## Abstract Lies spread faster than the truth There is worldwide concern over false news and the possibility that it can influence political, economic, and social well-being. To understand how false news spreads, Vosoughi et al. used a data set of rumor cascades on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. About 126,000 rumors were spread by ∼3 million people. False news reached more people than the truth; the top 1% of false news cascades diffused to between 1000 and 100,000 people, whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1000 people. Falsehood also diffused faster than the truth. The degree of novelty and the emotional reactions of recipients may be responsible for the differences observed. Science , this issue p. 1146
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