Bond Robert M, Garrett R Kelly
School of Communication, Ohio State University, 154 N. Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
PNAS Nexus. 2023 Jan 27;2(3):pgad018. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad018. eCollection 2023 Mar.
Contested factual claims shared online are of increasing interest to scholars and the public. Characterizing temporal patterns of sharing and engagement with such information, as well as the effect of sharing associated fact-checks, can help us understand the online political news environment more fully. Here, we investigate differential engagement with fact-checked posts shared online via Reddit from 2016 to 2018. The data comprise ∼29,000 conversations, ∼849,000 users, and ∼9.8 million comments. We classified the veracity of the posts being discussed as true, mixed, or false using three fact-checking organizations. Regardless of veracity, fact-checked posts had larger and longer lasting conversations than claims that were not fact-checked. Among those that were fact-checked, posts rated as false were discussed less and for shorter periods of time than claims that were rated as true. We also observe that fact-checks of posts rated as false tend to happen more quickly than fact-checks of posts rated as true. Finally, we observe that thread deletion and removal are systematically related to the presence of a fact-check and the veracity of the fact-check, but when deletion and removal are combined the differences are minimal. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.
学者和公众越来越关注在线分享的有争议的事实性声明。描述此类信息的分享和参与的时间模式，以及分享相关事实核查的效果，有助于我们更全面地了解在线政治新闻环境。在此，我们调查了2016年至2018年通过Reddit在线分享的经事实核查的帖子的不同参与情况。数据包括约29,000条对话、约849,000名用户和约980万条评论。我们使用三个事实核查组织将所讨论帖子的真实性分类为真、混合或假。无论真实性如何，经事实核查的帖子比未经事实核查的声明有更大且持续时间更长的对话。在那些经过事实核查的帖子中，被评为假的帖子比被评为真的声明讨论得更少且时间更短。我们还观察到，被评为假的帖子的事实核查往往比被评为真的帖子的事实核查发生得更快。最后，我们观察到主题帖的删除与事实核查的存在以及事实核查的真实性有系统关联，但当删除和移除合并时，差异很小。我们讨论了这些发现的理论和实际意义。
