False information is the order of the day on X, formerly Twitter, Facebook, etc. A new study has now found out who is most responsible for spreading this information.
The problem of misinformation spreading massively on social media is well known. However, a recently published study cited by “arstechnica.com” reveals astonishing details. According to it, a shocking 80 percent of the links to fake news sites come from just 0.3 percent of the Twitter accounts examined that are associated with voters from the USA.
What is surprising is the composition of the group that the researchers call “misinformation superspreaders.” Instead of the expected internet-savvy young people, it is mainly older and female Twitter users who click the “retweet” button more often than average.
According to the study, they are on average 58 years old and 60 percent female. They share an average of 16 news links per day, which is 16 times the amount of the rest of the Twitter community. In addition, 18 percent of these links are linked to fake news sources.
The researchers found that their tweets do have an influence on others. Around five percent of all accounts follow at least one superspreader and their tweets received more replies, retweets and likes than those of the rest of the population. For ten percent of followers, they are even the only source of fake news.
Interestingly, the superspreaders did not exhibit bot-like behavior. The researchers found little evidence of automated sharing and their activities were similar to those of the rest of the users. The majority of their content, 75 percent, was retweets.
There are also problems with disinformation on the German-speaking Internet. More than a million posts were published that were intended to turn the population against Ukraine and the German government. This is the result of research published in January. According to “Spiegel”, one of the most widely circulated short messages was: “I find it disappointing that the government is doing more for other countries than for its own citizens.” Russia wants to destabilize the West in this way.
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