How Social Media Machinery Pulled Mainstream Parenting Communities Closer to Extremes and Their Misinformation During Covid-19
How Social Media Machinery Pulled Mainstream Parenting Communities Closer to Extremes and Their Misinformation During Covid-19
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DOI：
10.1109/access.2021.3138982
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发表时间：
2022-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.9
通讯作者：
Johnson, Neil F.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Restrepo, Nicholas J.;Illari, Lucia;Johnson, Neil F.
我们揭示了隐藏的社交媒体机制，它允许错误信息在主流用户中茁壮成长，但在当前的政策讨论中却缺失了这一点。具体来说，我们展示了Facebook上的主流育儿社区在大流行期间如何受到强大的、双管齐下的错误信息机制的影响，这使他们更接近极端社区及其错误信息。第一个方面涉及加强主流育儿社区与新冠肺炎前阴谋论社区之间的联系，后者宣传有关气候变化、氟化物、化学物质和5G的错误信息。替代保健社区已成为关键的渠道。第二个侧重点是与之相邻的核心群体，这些群体关系紧密，但在很大程度上不为人知，他们反对接种疫苗，不断向主流育儿群体提供Covid-19和疫苗的错误信息。我们的研究结果表明，为什么Facebook自己发布有关疫苗和Covid-19的可靠信息的努力并不有效；为什么瞄准最大的社区不起作用；以及这种机器是如何不断产生新的错误信息的。我们为系统动力学提供了一个简单而精确可解的数学理论。它预测了一种控制主流社区临界点的新策略。我们的结论应该适用于任何具有内置社区功能的社交媒体平台，并为大规模解决在线错误信息和其他危害开辟了一种新的工程方法。
We reveal hidden social media machinery that has allowed misinformation to thrive among mainstream users, but which is missing from current policy discussions. Specifically, we show how mainstream parenting communities on Facebook have been subject to a powerful, two-pronged misinformation machinery during the pandemic, that has pulled them closer to extreme communities and their misinformation. The first prong involves a strengthening of the bond between mainstream parenting communities and pre-Covid conspiracy theory communities that promote misinformation about climate change, fluoride, chemtrails and 5G. Alternative health communities have acted as the critical conduits. The second prong features an adjacent core of tightly bonded, yet largely under-the-radar, anti-vaccination communities that continually supplied Covid-19 and vaccine misinformation to the mainstream parenting communities. Our findings show why Facebook's own efforts to post reliable information about vaccines and Covid-19 have not been efficient; why targeting the largest communities does not work; and how this machinery could generate new pieces of misinformation perpetually. We provide a simple yet exactly solvable mathematical theory for the system's dynamics. It predicts a new strategy for controlling mainstream community tipping points. Our conclusions should be applicable to any social media platform with in-built community features, and open up a new engineering approach to addressing online misinformation and other harms at scale.