To understand how false news spreads, Vosoughi et al. used a data set of rumor cascades on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. About 126,000 rumors were spread by ∼3 million people. False news reached more people than the truth; the top 1% of false news cascades diffused to between 1000 and 100,000 people, whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1000 people. Falsehood also diffused faster than the truth. The degree of novelty and the emotional reactions of recipients may be responsible for the differences observed.
In reaction to
this paper, many are saying false news spreads faster than true news (
here,
here, and
here for example). But not Tyler Cowen, who
critiques this interpretation of the study.
Overall the results of this paper remind me of another problem/data issue. At least in the old days, children’s movies used to earn more than films for adults, as stressed by Michael Medved. That doesn’t mean you have a quick money-making formula by simply making more movies for kids. It could be a few major kid’s movies, driven perhaps by peer effects, suck up most of the oxygen in the room and dominate the market. And then, within the universe of cascade-driven movies, kid’s movies will look really strong and indeed be really strong. That also doesn’t have to mean the kid’s movies have more cultural influence overall, even if they look dominant in the cascade-driven category. In this analogy, the kid’s movies are like the fake news.
Fake news has the advantage of being specifically designed to spread. True news has to overcome the extra hurtle of having to be true. And despite the internet, it seems like nobody fact checks anything.
