The Science of Fake News

[lapucelle]

As per Deborah Byrd of Earth Sky News

"A big and hopeful thing happened at the end of last week in the area of fake news. On March 9, 2018, the largest-yet study of fake news was published in Science. Accompanying it was a second article in Science, in which scientists called for:

… interdisciplinary research to reduce the spread of fake news and to address the underlying pathologies it has revealed.

The large study is titled The Spread of True and False News Online. Soroush Vosoughi of MIT was its lead author, working with co-authors Deb Roy and Sinan Aral. All of these researchers work in MIT’s Laboratory for Social Machines; that is, they’re trained to study and ultimately understand what most of us find unfathomable, the spread of information online. They found that:

Falsehood also diffused faster than the truth. The degree of novelty and the emotional reactions of recipients may be responsible for the differences observed."

http://earthsky.org/human-world/fake-news-mar-2018-article-science-calling-for-studies?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=b2091d6a56-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_02_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-b2091d6a56-394789169

You can read the full studies here:

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1094.full