Fake thumbs in play: A large-scale exploration of false amplification and false diminution in online news comment spaces

Abstract

This study explores how disinformation can dampen general users’ expressions of opinion online. In the context of a proven disinformation case in South Korea, this study analyzes externally validated click-logs of 1389 fake accounts and more than a million logs of 45,769 general users in a highly popular web portal. Findings show that the inflated visibility of anti-governmental opinions in the manipulated comment space was incongruent with the overall political tone that general users had spontaneously encountered from the broader media ecosystem beyond the manipulated space. Subsequently, this opinion “climate” incongruence decreased the likelihood of commenting in the manipulated space. The study concludes that false amplification (of the opinions that the manipulators promote) and false diminution (of general users’ political expressions) work in tandem to create a distorted opinion environment.

Gun Control Agendas in Networked Digital Environment: An Intermedia Comparison Between News Outlets, Activism Media, and Ephemeral Websites

“…Automated social media accounts are well-known examples of ephemeral information actors (Bastos & Mercea, 2019; Boichak et al, 2021). For example, social bots have been operated as an army of fake accounts that inflate the visibility of a “seed” content, a process that is referred to as false amplification, facilitating the spread of misinformation or hyperpartisan views, and artificially manipulate public attention to news agendas (Boichak et al, 2021; Kwon et al, 2022). Toraman et al (2022) showed a substantial number of automated accounts were temporarily created and deleted shortly during or after the BLM protests; those deleted accounts were more prone to tweeting misinformation and hate speech than longer tenured user accounts.…”