Truth decayHow Fake News Spreads Like a Real Virus
When it comes to real fake news, the kind of disinformation that Russia deployed during the 2016 elections, “going viral” isn’t just a metaphor. Using the tools for modelling the spread of infectious disease, cyber-risk researchers at Stanford Engineering are analyzing the spread of fake news much as if it were a strain of Ebola.
When it comes to real fake news, the kind of disinformation that Russia deployed during the 2016 elections, “going viral” isn’t just a metaphor.
Using the tools for modelling the spread of infectious disease, cyber-risk researchers at Stanford Engineering are analyzing the spread of fake news much as if it were a strain of Ebola. “We want to find the most effective way to cut the transmission chains, correct the information if possible and educate the most vulnerable targets,” says Elisabeth Paté-Cornell, the Burt and Deedee McMurtry Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University. She has long specialized in risk analysis and cybersecurity and is overseeing the research in collaboration with Travis I. Trammell, a doctoral candidate at Stanford. She shared some of the key learnings with Edmund L. Andrews, an economics reporter writing for who wrote for the School of Engineering:
Edmund L. Andrews: How does fake news replicate across social media?
Elisabeth Paté-Cornell: The researchers have adapted a model for understanding diseases that can infect a person more than once. It looks at how many people are “susceptible” to the disease – or in this case, likely to believe a piece of fake news. It also looks at how many have been exposed to it, and how many are actually “infected” and believe the story; and how many people are likely to spread a piece of fake news.
Much like a virus, the researchers say that over time being exposed to multiple strains of fake news can wear down a person’s resistance and make them increasingly susceptible. The more times a person is exposed to a piece of fake news, especially if it comes from an influential source, the more likely they are to become persuaded or infected.
Andrews: What makes it spread faster?
Paté-Cornell: The so-called “power law’” of social media, a well-documented pattern in social networks, holds that messages replicate most rapidly if they are targeted at relatively small numbers of influential people with large followings.
