Margolin, D. B., Hannak, A., & Weber, I. (2018). Political fact-checking on Twitter: When do corrections have an effect?. Political Communication, 35(2), 196-219. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10584609.2017.1334018?casa_token=xftR1jtjkdMAAAAA%3ApRSWcFHJ58eoBesKnxkoMR8ri-lVeQWoLPakXv9i_aZri4yWIDtjWBfYeEMOBso1kDpqcja-yXD4LQ 

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Researchers claimed that the relationship between the person spreading misinformation and the person who corrects them is important and wanted to study if this is actually the case for the spread of political misinformation on Twitter. In particular, they focused on the effects of social network and intergroup competition theories on the impact of misinformation corrections. 

Political fact-checking on Twitter: When do corrections have an effect?

- RQ1a: “How does the size of the snopee’s audience affect the tendency to accept the correction?”
- RQ1b: “How does the size of the snoper’s audience affect the snopee’s tendency to accept the correction?”
- H1: “Snopees are more likely to accept corrections from snopers who are friends than from snopers who are strangers.” 
- H2: “The larger the shared audience between snoper and snopee, the more likely that the snopee will accept the correction.”

Political fact-checking on Twitter: When do corrections have an effect? - Research Questions and Hypotheses

- Identifying snopes 
- Types of tweets
- Characterizing snoper-snopee relationships
- Categorizing snopes and responses
- Analysis 
- Results

Political fact-checking on Twitter: When do corrections have an effect? - Study 1

- Ran the same procedure on a new set of tweets from October 31, 3015 to February 3, 2016
- Snopes do not need to be political but need to fit into one of the tweet categories 
- Obtained 759 tweets that fit into one of the three triplet structures 
- 465 were deemed to contain corrections for misinformation 
- 91% of the correction tweets were accepted by snopees 

Political fact-checking on Twitter: When do corrections have an effect? - Study 2 Procedure

- People are more likely to accept misinformation correction pointed out by people they know because they feel accountable and probably share similar interests and preferences as their acquaintances 
- Twitter API does not provide information on when snoper-snopee relationships begin or end 
- People’s level of receptivity to misinformation correction could be impacted by who pointed it out rather than their insistence on the rumors
- The impact may not necessarily be the same in face-to-face exchange

Learn Before

Related