Social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and many others allow individuals to spread and organize information. The information or data can be pictures, locations, and ground-level facts. Aspects of social media like Hashtags allow individuals to group information into searchable categories. Facebook groups also allow for a way of organizing information. This information can then be spread to those in the affect population, officials, emergency responders, and world wide. 

How Collective Intelligence is used in Crises through Social Media

During a crisis, social media is used to spread information. Anyone can take part in the spreading of information which can be bad. Trust during a crisis is important and if individuals' social media posts are not regulated or fact-checked like those belonging to an organization or agency misinformation spreads. Rumor's and misinformation can cause panic and lead to resources being spent on false leads.

Albion College

Crisis informatics is a field of study that looks at the way the public uses social media and information technology during a crisis. More specifically how technology connects people and organizations to relevant information and how technology is used to create new ways of communication.  

Crisis Informatics

It's difficult to trace misinformation back to their original source. Sources of fake news tend to be hyperpartisan and far-right (pro-Trump during the 2016 U.S. election). This notion is supported that even in mainstream, left-wing journalists tend to follow journalistic guidelines and codes more than right-wing journalists. In the past years, automated bots have much contributed to the spread of misinformation. It has been found than certain social media sites such as Facebook are better for spreading fake news than others such as twitter. 

Supply of Misinformation

- The information appears to be true or is believable 
- Being rewritten in different forms
- Being accessible through multiple sources
- Confirmation Bias 
- Authoritative bias 
- Targeting hot topics
- Indicating urgency
- The Sunk Cost Fallacy 
- emotional appeals 
- False Beliefs
- Labels can lead to errors in assessment of information
- False Memories
- Inaccurate evaluation of information
- Ease of Processing
- Underthinking
- Deliberative processes

Reasons Misinformation Spreads

Hagar, C. (2013). Crisis Informatics: Perspectives of Trust – Is Social Media a Mixed Blessing?. School of Information Student Research Journal, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.31979/2575-2499.020202 Retrieved from 
https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/ischoolsrj/vol2/iss2/2

Crisis Informatics: Perspectives of Trust – Is Social Media a Mixed Blessing?

Collective Intelligence in the modern age is having a big impact on how crises are seen and dealt with. Scholars are interested in how social media plays a role in the creation of collective intelligence during a crisis.  

Using Collective Intelligence in Crises

Clicktivism is a way that individuals can show support for different political and social causes through social media posts and petitions. This type of support requires little to no effort or commitment and often looked down upon because of it.

Clicktivism

1. Economic Crisis
2. Cultural/Social Crisis
3. Political Crisis
4. Natural Disasters 
5. Terrorism 
6. Pandemic or widespread disease 
7. Nuclear or Chemical Crisis
8. War 

Types of Crisis

1. Too much or not enough (needed) information
2. The types of information needed during a crisis changes at various stages of the crisis
3. All the actors and organizations who are involved are constantly increasing the amount of information 
4. Creating a channel for information to be easily shared with the right individuals
5. Creating connections between informal and formal channels 
6. Uncertainty of the reliability of the information 
7. Uncertainty of the trustworthiness of sources
8. Dealing with conflicting information 

Information Challenges during a Crisis 

1. Examing and understanding the importance of knowledge in the different stages during crisis response and recovery
2. Create a system that can analyze the information-seeking procedures and information needs during a crisis
3. Learn about how technology can support communities going through a crisis
4. Understanding how technology impacts the integration and organization of information 

Goals of the Crisis Informatics Feild

Social Media is Unregulated: Double-edge Sword 

Considered a subcategory of Sociology disaster researchers uses mainly qualitative methods to record/capture perishable data that arises in social fields (comunication/social media) during non-rotuine situations (disasters/crises).  

Disaster Studies

- The Problem of Social Media Companies Business Practices with Misinformation
- How to solve the problem of social media companies encouraging misinformation

Social Media Companies and Misinformation

Unknown or unfamiliar news sources have the possibilities of producing biased stories or misinformation (Guess, Nyhan, and Reifler 2020; Lazer et al. 2018). 

Unknown/Unfamiliar Online News Sources

Misinformation Gets Attention Through Being Intertwined with Elements of Truth

Misinformation Gets Attention Through Being Rewritten in Different Forms

Misinformation Gets Attention Through Being Accessible Through Multiple Sources

Misinformation Gets Attention Through Targeting Hot Topics

A fallacy where individuals are less likely to give up an investment (financial or emotional) the more time they have put into it. 

The Sunk Cost Fallacy

A bias where individuals are more likely to follow figures of authority/influence. 

Authoritative Bias 

Many aspects of social media make it especially susceptible to the spread of misinformation. 
- Messages are easy to process, therefore easy to believe.
- Credibility is easily established by following friends, who often have similar views (which also establishes compatibility).
- Posts are shared by people you trust, establishes repetition and social consensus.
- Comments and related posts provide supporting evidence and familiarity.
- Users can gain a false sense of expertise, becoming very familiar with one perspective. 
- Lack of opposing ideas on a person’s feed is interpreted as a lack of different ideas overall.


The Susceptibility of Social Media to Misinformation

Errors in one's knowledge system that lead them to believe that an inaccurate piece of information is true.

False Beliefs

Labels can powerfully impact the way one assesses and interacts with information. Some labels have been known to distort perception and cause individuals to jump to inaccurate conclusions or misinterpret information.

The impact of labels on the assessment of information

Misinformation can spread because people are distracted by information other than accuracy. Some of these could include: party alignment, social relevance, or social reinforcement. 

Inattention-Based Account of Misinformation

A false memory is a recollection of an event, or details of an event, that did not actually occur. This phenomenon highlights that human memory is not a perfect, video-like recording of the past but is instead a reconstructive process capable of creating memories for things that never happened.

False Memories

- Cognitive biases 
- Accuracy of information is not a priority when gaining knowledge 
- The source of information is unknown or unreliable 
- Sources are often listed after the information has already been presented and embedded into one's knowledge base
- Evidence for a piece of information is not relevant  but gives the illusion of support 
- Alternative viewpoints are not considered
- Monitoring the accuracy of information takes great effort
- Working against one's own biases is difficult

Reasons for inaccurate evaluation of information

According to a study conducted by Cheng Zhou, Kai Li, and Yanhong Lu, misinformation containing specific linguistic qualities is more likely to be shared on social media. By examining the content of fake news posts and the number of shares, they found that misinformation containing persuasive and uncertainty words were more likely to be shared than true posts. The effect was moderated by the richness of the information. 

Linguistic Traits of Misinformation Online

People are more likely to believe a claim that they have been exposed to repeatedly. Repetition increases the perception of social consensus, even when it is just one person’s account being repeated multiple times. The effect of repetition of messages is so strong that it can sway people who are unsure and even convince people who know it is false to accept it.


Repetition of Information

We are more likely to accept information that is easy to process. 


Ease of Processing

When people accept information intuitively, rather than using systematic reasoning to critically analyze it. Can affect people with lower cognitive ability, people who rely on intuitive thinking, and people in situations which elicit underthinking.


Underthinking

- Negative emotional state vs. positive emotional state
- High arousal conditions vs. low arousal conditions
- The cognitive impact of anger 
- Anger and suggestibility
- Anger's effect on speed and confidence 
- Post-truth situation

Influences of emotion on accepting misinformation

Discourse concerning the role of deliberation in the creation of false beliefs from misinformation has been centered on two main perspectives:
- Motivated System 2 Reasoning (MS2R)
- Classical reasoning

Misinformation: Deliberative Processes

Social media algorithms analyze user behavior and prioritize content the platform believes the user wants to see and is most likely to engage with.

Social Media Algorithm

Defined as the extent to which news, regardless of its accuracy, is believed. Calculated as the average of one's belief in true news and belief in false news

Overall belief in fake news

A motivated reasoning account that posits that deliberation causes individuals to belief information (real or fake) that aligns with their political beliefs. This theory hypothesizes that there is a positive association between analytic thinking and perceived accuracy of headlines that align with one's beliefs. 

Motivated System 2 Reasoning (MS2R)

Confirmation bias is the cognitive tendency to selectively focus on cases that validate our pre-existing intuitive beliefs while actively disregarding or forgetting cases that contradict them. This mental shortcut leads individuals to reinforce incorrect assumptions by ignoring disconfirming evidence.

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