From News Sharers to Post Viewers: How Topic Diversity and Conspiracy Theories Shape Engagement With Misinformation During a Health Crisis?

2024-01-16

AI Summary

This study investigates heterogeneous user engagement mechanisms with multi-topic misinformation during health crises (e.g., COVID-19), distinguishing— for the first time—two behavioral tiers: “news sharers” versus “post viewers.” Leveraging 7,273 fact-checked debunking articles and their propagation traces on X (formerly Twitter), we integrate temporal analysis, LDA topic modeling, conspiracy-theory detection, and multivariate statistical modeling. Results show that: (1) conspiracy framing significantly prolongs misinformation lifespan and amplifies engagement across all modalities—retweets (+40.8%), likes (+45.2%), and replies (+44.1%); (2) topical diversity drives elevated interaction only among post viewers, with no significant effect on sharing behavior. The findings reveal critical interactions between user role heterogeneity and content-level features in misinformation diffusion, offering empirical grounding for tiered, role-aware intervention strategies.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Misinformation & Fake News
• Natural Language Processing: Fact-Checking / Misinformation Detection (NLP Focus)
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Conversational Systems for Recommendation & Retrieval

Application Category

• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Content-based information diffusion
• Responsible Web: Mitigating misinformation and disinformation
• Social Networks and Social Media: Media and governance, opinion dynamics, filter bubbles, polarization

Abstract

Engagement with misinformation on social media poses unprecedented threats to societal well-being, particularly during health crises when susceptibility to misinformation is heightened in a multi-topic context. This paper focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic and addresses a critical gap in understanding online engagement with multi-topic misinformation at two user levels: news sharers who share source news items on social media and post viewers who engage with online news posts. To this end, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of 7273 fact-checked source news claims related to COVID-19 and their associated posts on X, through the lens of topic diversity and conspiracy theories. We find that false news, particularly when accompanied by conspiracy theories, exhibits higher topic diversity than true news. At the news sharer level, false news has a longer lifetime and receives more posts on X than true news. Additionally, the integration of conspiracy theories is significantly associated with a longer lifetime for COVID-19 misinformation. However, topic diversity has no significant association with news sharer engagement in terms of news lifetime and the number of posts. At the post viewer level, contrary to the news sharer level, news posts characterized by heightened topic diversity receive more reposts, likes, and replies. Notably, post viewers tend to engage more with misinformation containing conspiracy narratives: false news posts that contain conspiracy theories, on average, receive 40.8% more reposts, 45.2% more likes, and 44.1% more replies compared to false news posts without conspiracy theories. Our findings suggest that news sharers and post viewers exhibit different engagement patterns on social media regarding topic diversity and conspiracy theories, offering valuable insights into designing targeted misinformation intervention strategies at both user levels.

Problem

• How topic diversity affects misinformation engagement on social media
• Impact of conspiracy theories on false news sharing longevity
• Differences in engagement patterns between news sharers and viewers

Innovation

• Analyzed topic diversity in misinformation
• Focused on conspiracy theories impact
• Compared engagement at sharer and viewer levels