A growing body of research tracking the spread of misinformation online has largely focused on presumably false stories from unreliable sources—websites that fabricate content or intentionally mislead readers. But a recent study co-authored by researchers affiliated with the University of Maryland indicates that some social media users deliberately repurpose credible journalism to advance misleading claims.
The multi-institutional team of researchers examined sharing patterns on Twitter/X, finding that accurate, mainstream stories shared by misinformation spreaders often echoed themes common in false content, including vaccine doubt, crime exaggeration and political distrust, according to the results published last month in Nature Human Behaviour.
"Our analysis suggests that users promoting misleading narratives find mainstream sources particularly attractive—especially when those sources publish information that can be spun to support their views," said lead author Pranav Goel Ph.D. '23, a postdoctoral research associate at Northeastern University who conducted the research while at UMD. "They are leveraging the credibility of these sources to give more weight to their own narrative."
Goel's co-authors include Jon Green, an assistant professor of political science at Duke University; David Lazer, a University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Computer Sciences at Northeastern University; and Philip Resnik, an MPower Professor of linguistics at UMD with an...
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