Italian Study on the Spread of Disinformation on Social Media

I know this is stating the obvious, but many of you folks like quantitative data to use with your arguments.

From the conclusion:

Quote:

g. Our findings show that users mostly tend to select and share content related to a specific narrative and to ignore the rest. In particular, we show that social homogeneity is the primary driver of content diffusion, and one frequent result is the formation of homogeneous, polarized clusters. Most of the times the information is taken by a friend having the same profile (polarization)––i.e., belonging to the same echo chamber.

and...

Quote:

Our analysis shows that for science and conspiracy news a cascade’s lifetime has a probability peak in the first 2 h, followed by a rapid decrease. Although the consumption patterns are similar, cascade lifetime as a function of the size differs greatly. These results suggest that news assimilation differs according to the categories. Science news is usually assimilated, i.e., it reaches a higher level of diffusion, quickly, and a longer lifetime does not correspond to a higher level of interest. Conversely, conspiracy rumors are assimilated more slowly and show a positive relation between lifetime and size.

The report is here on PDF:

http://ift.tt/1Jv1koy

(as always, if this is a re-post, Mods should feel free to delete it).

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1POBNI5