Detail from ‘Shall the People Rule’, a 1908 campaign poster for WJ Bryan that shows ‘the people’ marching on the forces of ‘ruin’, including ‘Bribery’, ‘Boodle’ and ‘Monopoly’. Artist: Latimer. Public Domain
Researchers have developed a new tool to measure Twitter users’ exposure to misinformation from political elites.
A study recently published in Nature Communications used the Politifacts fact-checking database to calculate a ‘falsity score’ for 816 public figures and organisations based on the likely truthfulness and accuracy of their statements on social media.
They then assigned Twitter users an ‘elite misinformation exposure’ score, based on the falsity scores of the political elites they follow on Twitter.
Instead of focusing on the sharing of fake news, which came to prominence during the 2016 US election cycle, the study centres on a more recent phenomenon – misinformation provided by political elites, such as those who falsely claimed the 2020 US Presidential Election was subject to widespread voter fraud.
“In focusing on what people believe and share, prior work has largely overlooked what misinformation people are exposed to,” said Dr Mohsen Mosleh, a senior lecturer in Business Analytics at the University of Exeter Business School and a Fellow at Alan Turing Institute, explaining why the study focuses on exposure to – rather than the sharing of – misinformation.
“Although exposure and sharing are obviously related, most people share only a tiny fraction of...
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