Yes the IRA attacked America in the soft underbelly known as the Facebook newsfeed, but what made that tummy so flaccid? It was not just the broadcaster - the broadcaster found receivers - many of them. Oafs, retired and semiretired; students, part time and less; nightwatchmen and nightwatchwomen, clicking on their smart phones.
They danced with the Ruskie night riders. And they danced on the winds of false news, which, Lohr reports, follows a unique trajectory. He focuses on an the MIT study that found false news travels faster than true news - that false claims were 70% more likely than the truth to be shared on Twitter
It took true stories about six times longer than false ones to reach 1500 people the MIT study disclosed.
The research was published in Science magazine. It examined stories posted to Twitter from 2006 until 2017, tracking 126,000 stories tweeted by roughly 3.0 million people more than 4.5 million times. News was defined broadly.
What is it about people that makes them more likely to share the false news? It's said here that true news inspired more anticipation, sadness and joy - while false claims elicited greater surprise and disgust. I guess you can say what is false is more visceral.
Should journalism classes be required of citizens in the 21st-century democracy? As I recall, the 20th century journalism teachers told us -- first day of class -- that you did not have to go to journalism school to be a journalist. We're people different then? Was the environment different than today's? - Jack Vaughan
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I remember in the run up to the election losing my temper with all the false things I was seeing - cant say really understood what was going on but I really wailed away on Facebook . Visceral, one night. Yes, yes. Take this y'all who is reposteth Breitbart, I railed too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/technology/twitter-fake-news-research.html
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