Interplay of rumor propagation and clarification on social media during crisis events - A game-theoretic approach

Agarwal, Puneet; Aziz, Ridwan Al; Zhuang, Jun

doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2021.06.060

Cited by 42 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Populating the decision tree with realworld data, they found that questions regarding rumours were frequently answered, but of the vast majority of people who disseminated the rumours in question (via retweet), fewer than 20% of users would take some remedial action if their retweet was debunked. The decision tree concept was extended by Agarwal et al (2022) using a game-theoretic approach, creating decision models that examined how authorities can select which rumours to debunk or clarify, and how important timeliness is compared with the quality of the clarification. Using several datasets relating to true and false rumours, they showed the value of authorities providing clarifying information, which dampened the dissemination of false rumours, as well as that, up to a point, it is better for authorities to delay debunking a false rumour until high quality information is available.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The decision tree concept was extended by Agarwal et al. ( 2022 ) using a game-theoretic approach, creating decision models that examined how authorities can select which rumours to debunk or clarify, and how important timeliness is compared with the quality of the clarification. Using several datasets relating to true and false rumours, they showed the value of authorities providing clarifying information, which dampened the dissemination of false rumours, as well as that, up to a point, it is better for authorities to delay debunking a false rumour until high quality information is available.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Promoting and countering misinformation during Australia’s 2019–2020 bushfires: a case study of polarisation

Weber

Falzon

Mitchell

et al. 2022

Soc. Netw. Anal. Min.

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During Australia’s unprecedented bushfires in 2019–2020, misinformation blaming arson surfaced on Twitter using . The extent to which bots and trolls were responsible for disseminating and amplifying this misinformation has received media scrutiny and academic research. Here, we study Twitter communities spreading this misinformation during the newsworthy event, and investigate the role of online communities using a natural experiment approach—before and after reporting of bots promoting the hashtag was broadcast by the mainstream media. Few bots were found, but the most bot-like accounts were social bots, which present as genuine humans, and trolling behaviour was evident. Further, we distilled meaningful quantitative differences between two polarised communities in the Twitter discussion, resulting in the following insights. First, Supporters of the arson narrative promoted misinformation by engaging others directly with replies and mentions using hashtags and links to external sources. In response, Opposers retweeted fact-based articles and official information. Second, Supporters were embedded throughout their interaction networks, but Opposers obtained high centrality more efficiently despite their peripheral positions. By the last phase, Opposers and unaffiliated accounts appeared to coordinate, potentially reaching a broader audience. Finally, the introduction of the bot report changed the discussion dynamic: Opposers only responded immediately, while Supporters countered strongly for days, but new unaffiliated accounts drawn into the discussion shifted the dominant narrative from arson misinformation to factual and official information. This foiled Supporters’ efforts, highlighting the value of exposing misinformation. We speculate that the communication strategies observed here could inform counter-strategies in other misinformation-related discussions.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Promoting and countering misinformation during Australia’s 2019–2020 bushfires: a case study of polarisation

Weber

Falzon

Mitchell

et al. 2022

Soc. Netw. Anal. Min.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Motivated by the fact that few scholars have investigated the strategic interaction between official institutions and influencers in social media during rumor clarification and verification, and the direction for future research proposed by Agarwal et al (2022) , this article completes the following work:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Although Online Social Networks (OSNs) provide a great convenience for people to interact andoften serve as a platform for countries to release critical decisions during disastrous events ( Ngamassi et al, 2016 ; Subramaniyaswamy et al, 2017 ), it also speeds up the spread of misinformation, such as rumors, in an unprecedented short time ( Islam et al, 2020 ), and thus threaten public order and social stability ( McKee et al, 2019 ). How to clarify and control online rumors has attracted significant attention from the research community ( Hosni et al, 2020b ; Wang X. et al, 2021 ; Zareie and Sakellariou, 2021 ; Agarwal et al, 2022 ; Yao et al, 2022 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The most common means to control rumors is to release clarification information by official agencies and media companies. Due to limited resources, official rumor-refuting agencies must make strategic clarification strategies for various rumors while considering the potential tradeoffs between the cost of clarifying rumors and the impact of rumors on online social networks ( Agarwal et al, 2022 ). There can be some unofficial individual users in a social network who have numerous followers, and their comments can be more influential than others.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Interaction between official institutions and influential users of rumor control in online social networks

Bai

Jiang

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Online interactions have become major channels for people to obtain and disseminate information during the new normal of COVID-19, which can also be a primary platform for rumor propagation. There are many complex psychological reasons for spreading rumors, but previous studies have not fully analyzed this problem from the perspective of the interaction between official institutions and influential users. The purpose of this study is to determine optimal strategies for official institutions considering the impact of two different influential user types (trolls and reputed personalities) by designing two game-theoretic models, namely “Rumor Clarification and Interaction Model” and “Rumor Verification and Interaction Model,” which can, respectively decide whether to clarify and when to clarify. The results of this article show that clarification strategies can be decided according to the characteristics of rumors and the influential user’s reactions. Meanwhile, publishing verified information prevents trolls’ “loophole advantages” and prevents reputed personalities from spreading false information due to the vague authenticity of rumors. Results also show that the verification strategy is limited by cost, period, and verification index.

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Stress Contagion Protocols for Human and Autonomous Robot Teams

Shmerko,

Iwashita,

Stoica

et al. 2023

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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Interplay of rumor propagation and clarification on social media during crisis events - A game-theoretic approach

Cited by 42 publications

References 39 publications

Promoting and countering misinformation during Australia’s 2019–2020 bushfires: a case study of polarisation

Promoting and countering misinformation during Australia’s 2019–2020 bushfires: a case study of polarisation

Interaction between official institutions and influential users of rumor control in online social networks

Stress Contagion Protocols for Human and Autonomous Robot Teams

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