Abstract

Significance The wide availability of user-provided content in online social media facilitates the aggregation of people around common interests, worldviews, and narratives. However, the World Wide Web is a fruitful environment for the massive diffusion of unverified rumors. In this work, using a massive quantitative analysis of Facebook, we show that information related to distinct narratives––conspiracy theories and scientific news––generates homogeneous and polarized communities (i.e., echo chambers) having similar information consumption patterns. Then, we derive a data-driven percolation model of rumor spreading that demonstrates that homogeneity and polarization are the main determinants for predicting cascades’ size.

Keywords

MisinformationRumorSocial mediaNarrativeComputer scienceInformation cascadeInternet privacyMedia consumptionData scienceWorld Wide WebAdvertisingPsychologyPolitical scienceComputer securitySocial psychologyPublic relationsBusiness

MeSH Terms

CommunicationComputer SimulationHumansModelsTheoreticalScienceSocial Media

Affiliated Institutions

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Publication Info

Year
2016
Type
article
Volume
113
Issue
3
Pages
554-559
Citations
2185
Access
Closed

Social Impact

Altmetric

Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions

Citation Metrics

2185
OpenAlex
72
Influential

Cite This

Michela Del Vicario, Alessandro Bessi, Fabiana Zollo et al. (2016). The spreading of misinformation online. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 113 (3) , 554-559. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1517441113

Identifiers

DOI
10.1073/pnas.1517441113
PMID
26729863
PMCID
PMC4725489

Data Quality

Data completeness: 86%