Department of Computer Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 90007, USA.
Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey, 90292, USA.
Sci Rep. 2022 Sep 19;12(1):15671. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-19837-7.
Online misinformation is believed to have contributed to vaccine hesitancy during the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting concerns about social media's destabilizing role in public life. Previous research identified a link between political conservatism and sharing misinformation; however, it is not clear how partisanship affects how much misinformation people see online. As a result, we do not know whether partisanship drives exposure to misinformation or people selectively share misinformation despite being exposed to factual content. To address this question, we study Twitter discussions about the Covid-19 pandemic, classifying users along the political and factual spectrum based on the information sources they share. In addition, we quantify exposure through retweet interactions. We uncover partisan asymmetries in the exposure to misinformation: conservatives are more likely to see and share misinformation, and while users' connections expose them to ideologically congruent content, the interactions between political and factual dimensions create conditions for the highly polarized users-hardline conservatives and liberals-to amplify misinformation. Overall, however, misinformation receives less attention than factual content and political moderates, the bulk of users in our sample, help filter out misinformation. Identifying the extent of polarization and how political ideology exacerbates misinformation can help public health experts and policy makers improve their messaging.
网络错误信息被认为是导致新冠疫情期间疫苗犹豫的原因之一，凸显出人们对社交媒体在公共生活中不稳定作用的担忧。先前的研究已经确定了政治保守主义与错误信息传播之间存在关联；然而，人们并不清楚党派立场如何影响他们在网上看到的错误信息数量。因此，我们不清楚党派立场是导致人们接触错误信息，还是尽管人们接触到真实内容，仍会选择性地传播错误信息。为了解决这个问题，我们研究了推特上关于新冠疫情的讨论，根据用户分享的信息来源，在政治和事实两个维度上对用户进行分类。此外，我们还通过转发互动来量化接触错误信息的程度。我们发现错误信息接触存在党派不对称性：保守派更有可能看到和传播错误信息，尽管用户的关系会让他们接触到与自己意识形态一致的内容，但政治和事实维度之间的相互作用为高度极化的用户——强硬保守派和自由派——创造了放大错误信息的条件。然而，总的来说，错误信息的关注度低于真实内容，而政治温和派——我们样本中的大部分用户——则帮助过滤掉了错误信息。确定极化的程度以及政治意识形态如何加剧错误信息传播，可以帮助公共卫生专家和政策制定者改善他们的信息传递。
