Tag Archives | Social Media

The Diffusion and Reach of (Mis)Information on Facebook During the U.S. 2020 Election

Sandra González-Bailón, David Lazer, Pablo Barberá, William Godel, Hunt Allcott, Taylor Brown, Adriana Crespo-Tenorio, Deen Freelon, Matthew Gentzkow, Andrew M. Guess, Shanto Iyengar, Young Mie Kim, Neil Malhotra, Devra Moehler, Brendan Nyhan, Jennifer Pan, Carlos Velasco Rivera, Jaime Settle, Emily Thorson, Rebekah Tromble, Arjun Wilkins, Magdalena Wojcieszak, Chad Kiewiet de Jonge, Annie Franco, Winter Mason, Natalie Jomini Stroud, Joshua A. Tucker

Sociological Science December 11, 2024
10.15195/v11.a41


Social media creates the possibility for rapid, viral spread of content, but how many posts actually reach millions? And is misinformation special in how it propagates? We answer these questions by analyzing the virality of and exposure to information on Facebook during the U.S. 2020 presidential election. We examine the diffusion trees of the approximately 1 B posts that were re-shared at least once by U.S.-based adults from July 1, 2020, to February 1, 2021. We differentiate misinformation from non-misinformation posts to show that (1) misinformation diffused more slowly, relying on a small number of active users that spread misinformation via long chains of peer-to-peer diffusion that reached millions; non-misinformation spread primarily through one-to-many affordances (mainly, Pages); (2) the relative importance of peer-to-peer spread for misinformation was likely due to an enforcement gap in content moderation policies designed to target mostly Pages and Groups; and (3) periods of aggressive content moderation proximate to the election coincide with dramatic drops in the spread and reach of misinformation and (to a lesser extent) political content.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


0

Viral Altruism? Charitable Giving and Social Contagion in Online Networks

Nicola Lacetera, Mario Macis, Angelo Mele

Sociological Science, March 24, 2016
DOI 10.15195/v3.a11


How do social media affect the success of charitable campaigns? We show that, despite the promise of online platforms to generate social network effects in generosity through social contagion or peer effects, these platforms may instead stimulate costless (and less impactful) forms of involvement. Online social contagion might thus be limited when it comes to contributing real money to charities. This study relies on both individual-level longitudinal data and experimental evidence from a social media application that facilitates donations while broadcasting donors’ activities to their contacts. We find that broadcasting is positively associated with donations, although some individuals appear to opportunistically broadcast a pledge and then delete it. Furthermore, broadcasting a pledge is associated with more pledges by a user’s contacts, suggesting the presence of network effects or social contagion. However, results from a field experiment where broadcasting of the initial pledges was randomized suggest that the observational findings were likely due to homophily rather than genuine contagion effects. The experiment also shows that, although the campaigns reached approximately 6.4 million users and generated considerable attention in the form of clicks and “likes,” only 30 donations were made. Finally, an online survey experiment indicates that both the presence of an intermediary and a fee contributed to the low donation rate.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

0

The Structure of Online Activism

Kevin Lewis, Kurt Gray, Jens Meierhenrich

Sociological Science, February 18, 2014
DOI 10.15195/v1.a1

Despite the tremendous amount of attention that has been paid to the internet as a tool for civic engagement, we still have little idea how “active” is the average online activist or how social networks matter in facilitating electronic protest. In this paper, we use complete records on the donation and recruitment activity of 1.2 million members of the Save Darfur “Cause” on Facebook to provide a detailed first look at a massive online social movement. While both donation and recruitment behavior are socially patterned, the vast majority of Cause members recruited no one else into the Cause and contributed no money to it-suggesting that in the case of the Save Darfur campaign, Facebook conjured an illusion of activism rather than facilitating the real thing.

10
SiteLock