Truth decayDisinformation and fake news on Twitter
The Knight Foundation has just released a new report — Disinformation, ‘Fake News’, and Influence Campaigns on Twitter – which, among other disturbing findings, shows that despite government efforts taken against those responsible for the misinformation campaigns during the 2016 election, 80 percent of these accounts are still active and still tweeting. Together, they produce about 1 million tweets per day. The study also found that 60 percent of these accounts have evidence they are partially run by bots, and many of the bot-run accounts appear to be connected.
The Knight Foundation has just released a new report — Disinformation, ‘Fake News’, and Influence Campaigns on Twitter – which, among other disturbing findings, shows that despite government efforts taken against those responsible for the misinformation campaigns during the 2016 election, 80 percent of these accounts are still active and still tweeting. Together, they produce about 1 million tweets per day.
The foundation analyzed 700,000 Twitter accounts linked to “fake news” organizations and the more than ten million tweets and retweets that these accounts sent before in the past few years.
The study also found that 60 percent of these accounts have evidence they are partially run by bots, and many of the bot-run accounts appear to be connected.
Twitter announced Monday it would broaden its definition of what constitutes a fake account and enforce stricter punishments on those spreading misinformation on the platform. Last month, Facebook also promised to crack down on “fake” accounts and “contain” the misinformation they disseminate.
Here is the executive summary of the Knight Foundation’s report:
This study is one of the largest analyses to date on how fake news spread on Twitter both during and after the 2016 election campaign.
Using tools and mapping methods from Graphika, a social media intelligence firm, we study more than 10 million tweets from 700,000 Twitter accounts that linked to more than 600 fake and conspiracy news outlets. Crucially, we study fake and conspiracy news both before and after the election, allowing us to measure how the fake news ecosystem has evolved since November 2016.
Much fake news and disinformation is still being spread on Twitter.
Consistent with other research, we find more than 6.6 million tweets linking to fake and conspiracy news publishers in the month before the 2016 election. Yet disinformation continues to be a substantial problem postelection, with 4.0 million tweets linking to fake and conspiracy news publishers found in a 30-day period from mid-March to mid-April 2017. Contrary to claims that fake news is a game of “whack-a-mole,” more than 80 percent of the disinformation accounts in our election maps are still active as this report goes to press. These accounts continue to publish more than a million tweets in a typical day.
