X/Twitter: Older women manually share much of the disinformation
An analysis of 660,000 accounts on X confirms that extremely few accounts spread the most fake news. It now also shows who they are.
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In the USA, significantly less than one percent of users of the short message service X (formerly Twitter) spread the majority of disinformation there, and these are disproportionately older white women from three conservative states who vote Republican. A research group has determined this for the United States and immediately proposed a number of measures that could effectively curb the problem, summarizes the scientific journal Science. They found that the approximately 2100 "supersharers" from a sample of more than 660,000 accounts are apparently active manually. "They literally sit in front of their computers and press retweet," explains psychologist Briony Swire-Thompson.
(Image:Â Baribi-Bartov et.al)
Who is clear now, but why?
For the analysis, the research group examined the behavior of over 660,000 X accounts containing real names and location information. They were able to compare these with voter registration data. In this way, they determined who was behind exactly 2107 (0.3 percent) accounts that spread 80 percent of the posts that lead to websites full of "fake news". They were disproportionately "middle-aged white women" from Arizona, Florida and Texas, who live in areas with low education but relatively high incomes. It appears that disinformation is not being spread around elections by tech-savvy individuals, but that there is a long-lasting social process behind it, in which the ecosystem around news is contaminated for some.
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The study once again suggests that disinformation and fake news are spread by comparatively few individuals who are immensely active on social networks. At the same time, they reach numerous people, with every 20th account in the data set following at least one "supersharer". Considering the sheer volume of activity, the research group initially assumed that they were posting automatically, writes Science. However, neither the times nor the pauses between posts provided any indication of this. That was a big surprise, says Swire-Thompson. They would manually distort "the political reality for many". Now that we know who is behind this, the question arises: "Why are they doing this?"
Based on the results, the two researchers and their colleague suggest that the fight against "fake news" should start directly with the "supersharers". If those identified in their study had been suspended before the US presidential elections, two thirds fewer links to disinformation would have been disseminated on the short message service. Alternatively, the number of permitted retweets could also be limited. A limit of 50 retweets per day, for example, would affect 90 percent of "supersharers", but only one percent of all users. An additional query before a retweet would also be conceivable. The entire study has been published in the research magazine Science.
(mho)
