Integrity 2021

Social Media and the News: Approaches to the Spread of (Mis)information

Axel Bruns

• 12 Mar. 2021 – Integrity 2021: Integrity in Social Networks and Media workshop at the 14th ACM Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM) in Jerusalem, Israel

This paper presents an overview of several research initiatives in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society and QUT Digital Media Research Centre that examine the spread of information, misinformation, and disinformation across social media platforms especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on a variety of methods from large-scale analytics to detailed forensic analysis, we examine the differences in the dissemination dynamics of mainstream and fringe news content; trace the spread of conspiracy theories and other coronavirus misinformation to identify the key points of inflection and amplification; explore methods for the detection of coordinated inauthentic behaviour; and examine the impact of automated content moderation.

Video of the Paper

Presentation Slides

Abstract

Axel Bruns. “Social Media and the News: Approaches to the Spread of (Mis)information.” Paper presented as part of the workshop Integrity 2021: Integrity in Social Networks and Media, at the 14th ACM Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM) in Jerusalem, Israel, 12 Mar. 2021.