Studying information recurrence, gatekeeping, and the role of communities during internet outages in Venezuela

Abstract Many authoritarian regimes have taken to censoring internet access in order to stop the spread of misinformation, restrict citizens from discussing certain topics, and prevent mobilization, among other reasons. There are several theories about the effectiveness of censorship. Some suggest t...

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Autores principales:	Pamela Bilo Thomas, Emily Saldanha, Svitlana Volkova
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Nature Portfolio 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/4855ac44080e47df8bc2e8c10c1f3e06
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:4855ac44080e47df8bc2e8c10c1f3e062021-12-02T14:26:16ZStudying information recurrence, gatekeeping, and the role of communities during internet outages in Venezuela10.1038/s41598-021-87473-82045-2322https://doaj.org/article/4855ac44080e47df8bc2e8c10c1f3e062021-04-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-87473-8https://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract Many authoritarian regimes have taken to censoring internet access in order to stop the spread of misinformation, restrict citizens from discussing certain topics, and prevent mobilization, among other reasons. There are several theories about the effectiveness of censorship. Some suggest that censorship will effectively limit the flow of information, whereas others predict that a backlash will form, resulting in ultimately more discussion about the topic. In this work, we analyze the role of communities and gatekeepers during multiple internet outages in Venezuela in January 2019. First, we measure how critical information (e.g., entities and hashtags) spreads during outages focusing on information recurrence and burstiness within and across language and location communities. We discover that information bursts tend to cross both language and location community boundaries rather than being limited to a single community during several outages. Then we identify users who play central roles and propose a novel method to detect gatekeepers—users who prevent critical information from spreading across communities during outages. We show that bilingual and English-speaking users play more central roles compared to Spanish-speaking users, but users inside and outside Venezuela have similar distribution of centrality. Finally, we measure the differences in social network structure before and after each outage event and discuss its effect on how information spreads. We find that with each outage event social connections tend to get less connected with higher mean shortest path, indicating that the effect of censorship makes it harder for information to spread.Pamela Bilo ThomasEmily SaldanhaSvitlana VolkovaNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 11, Iss 1, Pp 1-13 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Pamela Bilo Thomas Emily Saldanha Svitlana Volkova Studying information recurrence, gatekeeping, and the role of communities during internet outages in Venezuela
description	Abstract Many authoritarian regimes have taken to censoring internet access in order to stop the spread of misinformation, restrict citizens from discussing certain topics, and prevent mobilization, among other reasons. There are several theories about the effectiveness of censorship. Some suggest that censorship will effectively limit the flow of information, whereas others predict that a backlash will form, resulting in ultimately more discussion about the topic. In this work, we analyze the role of communities and gatekeepers during multiple internet outages in Venezuela in January 2019. First, we measure how critical information (e.g., entities and hashtags) spreads during outages focusing on information recurrence and burstiness within and across language and location communities. We discover that information bursts tend to cross both language and location community boundaries rather than being limited to a single community during several outages. Then we identify users who play central roles and propose a novel method to detect gatekeepers—users who prevent critical information from spreading across communities during outages. We show that bilingual and English-speaking users play more central roles compared to Spanish-speaking users, but users inside and outside Venezuela have similar distribution of centrality. Finally, we measure the differences in social network structure before and after each outage event and discuss its effect on how information spreads. We find that with each outage event social connections tend to get less connected with higher mean shortest path, indicating that the effect of censorship makes it harder for information to spread.
format	article
author	Pamela Bilo Thomas Emily Saldanha Svitlana Volkova
author_facet	Pamela Bilo Thomas Emily Saldanha Svitlana Volkova
author_sort	Pamela Bilo Thomas
title	Studying information recurrence, gatekeeping, and the role of communities during internet outages in Venezuela
title_short	Studying information recurrence, gatekeeping, and the role of communities during internet outages in Venezuela
title_full	Studying information recurrence, gatekeeping, and the role of communities during internet outages in Venezuela
title_fullStr	Studying information recurrence, gatekeeping, and the role of communities during internet outages in Venezuela
title_full_unstemmed	Studying information recurrence, gatekeeping, and the role of communities during internet outages in Venezuela
title_sort	studying information recurrence, gatekeeping, and the role of communities during internet outages in venezuela
publisher	Nature Portfolio
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/4855ac44080e47df8bc2e8c10c1f3e06
work_keys_str_mv	AT pamelabilothomas studyinginformationrecurrencegatekeepingandtheroleofcommunitiesduringinternetoutagesinvenezuela AT emilysaldanha studyinginformationrecurrencegatekeepingandtheroleofcommunitiesduringinternetoutagesinvenezuela AT svitlanavolkova studyinginformationrecurrencegatekeepingandtheroleofcommunitiesduringinternetoutagesinvenezuela
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Studying information recurrence, gatekeeping, and the role of communities during internet outages in Venezuela

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