Hong Chen-Shuo
Department of Sociology University of Massachusetts, 200 Hicks Way, 738 Thompson Hall, Amherst, MA, 01003, USA.
Soc Sci Res. 2024 May;120:103004. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2024.103004. Epub 2024 Mar 30.
This study explores why some fake news publishers are able to propagate misinformation while others receive little attention on social media. Using COVID-19 vaccine tweets as a case study, this study combined the relational niche framework with pooled and multilevel models that address the unobserved heterogeneity. The results showed that, as expected, ties to accounts with more followers were associated with more fake news tweets, retweets, and likes. However, more surprisingly, embedding with fake news publishers had an inverted U-shaped association with diffusion, whereas social proximity to mainstream media was positively associated. Although the effect of influential users is in line with opinion leader theory, the newly-identified effects of social proximity to reliable sources and embeddedness suggest that the key to fake news virality is to earn greater organizational status and modest, not overly, echo chambers. This study highlights the potential of dynamic media networks to shape the misinformation market.
本研究探讨了为何一些虚假新闻发布者能够传播错误信息，而另一些在社交媒体上却很少受到关注。以新冠疫苗推文为例，本研究将关系生态位框架与处理未观察到的异质性的汇总模型和多层次模型相结合。结果表明，正如预期的那样，与粉丝较多的账户建立联系与更多虚假新闻推文、转发和点赞相关。然而，更令人惊讶的是，与虚假新闻发布者的嵌入度与传播呈倒U形关联，而与主流媒体的社会亲近度则呈正相关。虽然有影响力用户的作用与意见领袖理论一致，但新发现的与可靠来源的社会亲近度和嵌入度的作用表明，虚假新闻传播的关键在于获得更高的组织地位以及适度而非过度的回音室效应。本研究强调了动态媒体网络塑造错误信息市场的潜力。
