Exhibit Sources

Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

 

Dancyger, Lilly. “Researchers Retract Widely Cited Fake-News Study.” Rolling Stone, 10 Jan. 2019, https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/fake-news-study-retracted-777422/. 

“For me it’s very embarrassing, but errors occur and of course when we find them we have to correct them,” Menczer tells Rolling Stone. “The results of our paper show that in fact the low attention span does play a role in the spread of low quality information, but to say that something plays a role is not the same as saying that it’s enough to fully explain why something happens. It’s one of many factors.”  

While short attention spans play a large role in how misinformation is spread on social media, it is not the sole reason behind it. The spread can be attributed to any number of things, including social media “bots.”

 

Meserole, Chris. “How Misinformation Spreads on Social Media-And What to Do about It.” Brookings, Brookings, 9 May 2018, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/05/09/how-misinformation-spreads-on-social-media-and-what-to-do-about-it/.

This graph taken from twitter highlights the events proceeding a terrorist attack. As you can see, the inaccurate and seemingly racist accusations got exponentially more retweets than the accurate account. This graph helps show why it is important for misinformation spread to be kept to a minimum. This accusation can not only be racist, but may lead law enforcement to apprehend the wrong person.