Promoting and countering misinformation during Australia's 2019-2020 bushfires: a case study of polarisation.

Crisis Information campaigns Misinformation Polarisation Social media Twitter

Journal

Social network analysis and mining
ISSN: 1869-5450
Titre abrégé: Soc Netw Anal Min
Pays: Germany
ID NLM: 101616226

Informations de publication

Date de publication:
2022
Historique:
received: 16 11 2021
revised: 15 05 2022
accepted: 16 05 2022
entrez: 5 7 2022
pubmed: 6 7 2022
medline: 6 7 2022
Statut: ppublish

Résumé

During Australia's unprecedented bushfires in 2019-2020, misinformation blaming arson surfaced on Twitter using #ArsonEmergency. The extent to which bots and trolls were responsible for disseminating and amplifying this misinformation has received media scrutiny and academic research. Here, we study Twitter communities spreading this misinformation during the newsworthy event, and investigate the role of online communities using a natural experiment approach-before and after reporting of bots promoting the hashtag was broadcast by the mainstream media. Few bots were found, but the most bot-like accounts were The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13278-022-00892-x.

Identifiants

pubmed: 35789892
doi: 10.1007/s13278-022-00892-x
pii: 892
pmc: PMC9243896
doi:

Types de publication

Journal Article

Langues

eng

Pagination

64

Informations de copyright

© Crown 2022.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Conflict of interestThe authors have no relevant funding, financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

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Auteurs

Derek Weber (D)

School of Computer Science, University of Adelaide, North Terrace, Adelaide, SA 5005 Australia.
Defence Science and Technology Group, West Terrace, Edinburgh, SA 5111 Australia.

Lucia Falzon (L)

School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville Campus, Melbourne, VIC 3010 Australia.
School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Adelaide, North Terrace, Adelaide, SA 5005 Australia.

Lewis Mitchell (L)

School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Adelaide, North Terrace, Adelaide, SA 5005 Australia.
ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers, North Terrace, Adelaide, SA 5005 Australia.

Mehwish Nasim (M)

School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Adelaide, North Terrace, Adelaide, SA 5005 Australia.
ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers, North Terrace, Adelaide, SA 5005 Australia.
College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, South Road, Tonsley, SA 5042 Australia.
Department of Computer Science & Software Engineering, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia.

Classifications MeSH