| Title |
The spread of true and false news online
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Science, March 2018
|
| DOI | 10.1126/science.aap9559 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, Sinan Aral |
| Abstract |
We investigated the differential diffusion of all of the verified true and false news stories distributed on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. The data comprise ~126,000 stories tweeted by ~3 million people more than 4.5 million times. We classified news as true or false using information from six independent fact-checking organizations that exhibited 95 to 98% agreement on the classifications. Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial information. We found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people were more likely to share novel information. Whereas false stories inspired fear, disgust, and surprise in replies, true stories inspired anticipation, sadness, joy, and trust. Contrary to conventional wisdom, robots accelerated the spread of true and false news at the same rate, implying that false news spreads more than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 9,782 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 1473 | 15% |
| Spain | 381 | 4% |
| United Kingdom | 367 | 4% |
| Japan | 352 | 4% |
| Canada | 327 | 3% |
| France | 250 | 3% |
| Brazil | 149 | 2% |
| Chile | 130 | 1% |
| Netherlands | 126 | 1% |
| Other | 1820 | 19% |
| Unknown | 4407 | 45% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 7995 | 82% |
| Scientists | 1178 | 12% |
| Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 365 | 4% |
| Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) | 233 | 2% |
| Unknown | 11 | <1% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 4,307 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Unknown | 4307 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 623 | 14% |
| Student > Master | 598 | 14% |
| Student > Bachelor | 485 | 11% |
| Researcher | 364 | 8% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 199 | 5% |
| Other | 737 | 17% |
| Unknown | 1301 | 30% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Social Sciences | 692 | 16% |
| Computer Science | 548 | 13% |
| Psychology | 271 | 6% |
| Business, Management and Accounting | 223 | 5% |
| Medicine and Dentistry | 139 | 3% |
| Other | 970 | 23% |
| Unknown | 1464 | 34% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 13010. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 06 December 2023.
All research outputs
#95
of 24,945,754 outputs
Outputs from Science
#5
of 80,346 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#1
of 338,141 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Science
#1
of 1,093 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 24,945,754 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 80,346 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 64.9. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 1,093 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.