Emotions explain differences in the diffusion of true vs. false social media rumors

Abstract False rumors (often termed “fake news”) on social media pose a significant threat to modern societies. However, potential reasons for the widespread diffusion of false rumors have been underexplored. In this work, we analyze whether sentiment words, as well as different emotional words, in...

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Autores principales:	Nicolas Pröllochs, Dominik Bär, Stefan Feuerriegel
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Nature Portfolio 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/cb6c8048719246ddad190966336e0327
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:cb6c8048719246ddad190966336e03272021-11-28T12:17:09ZEmotions explain differences in the diffusion of true vs. false social media rumors10.1038/s41598-021-01813-22045-2322https://doaj.org/article/cb6c8048719246ddad190966336e03272021-11-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-01813-2https://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract False rumors (often termed “fake news”) on social media pose a significant threat to modern societies. However, potential reasons for the widespread diffusion of false rumors have been underexplored. In this work, we analyze whether sentiment words, as well as different emotional words, in social media content explain differences in the spread of true vs. false rumors. For this purpose, we collected $${\varvec{N}} =126{,}301$$ N = 126 , 301 rumor cascades from Twitter, comprising more than 4.5 million retweets that have been fact-checked for veracity. We then categorized the language in social media content to (1) sentiment (i.e., positive vs. negative) and (2) eight basic emotions (i. e., anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, trust, sadness, and surprise). We find that sentiment and basic emotions explain differences in the structural properties of true vs. false rumor cascades. False rumors (as compared to true rumors) are more likely to go viral if they convey a higher proportion of terms associated with a positive sentiment. Further, false rumors are viral when embedding emotional words classified as trust, anticipation, or anger. All else being equal, false rumors conveying one standard deviation more positive sentiment have a 37.58% longer lifetime and reach 61.44% more users. Our findings offer insights into how true vs. false rumors spread and highlight the importance of managing emotions in social media content.Nicolas PröllochsDominik BärStefan FeuerriegelNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 11, Iss 1, Pp 1-12 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Nicolas Pröllochs Dominik Bär Stefan Feuerriegel Emotions explain differences in the diffusion of true vs. false social media rumors
description	Abstract False rumors (often termed “fake news”) on social media pose a significant threat to modern societies. However, potential reasons for the widespread diffusion of false rumors have been underexplored. In this work, we analyze whether sentiment words, as well as different emotional words, in social media content explain differences in the spread of true vs. false rumors. For this purpose, we collected $${\varvec{N}} =126{,}301$$ N = 126 , 301 rumor cascades from Twitter, comprising more than 4.5 million retweets that have been fact-checked for veracity. We then categorized the language in social media content to (1) sentiment (i.e., positive vs. negative) and (2) eight basic emotions (i. e., anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, trust, sadness, and surprise). We find that sentiment and basic emotions explain differences in the structural properties of true vs. false rumor cascades. False rumors (as compared to true rumors) are more likely to go viral if they convey a higher proportion of terms associated with a positive sentiment. Further, false rumors are viral when embedding emotional words classified as trust, anticipation, or anger. All else being equal, false rumors conveying one standard deviation more positive sentiment have a 37.58% longer lifetime and reach 61.44% more users. Our findings offer insights into how true vs. false rumors spread and highlight the importance of managing emotions in social media content.
format	article
author	Nicolas Pröllochs Dominik Bär Stefan Feuerriegel
author_facet	Nicolas Pröllochs Dominik Bär Stefan Feuerriegel
author_sort	Nicolas Pröllochs
title	Emotions explain differences in the diffusion of true vs. false social media rumors
title_short	Emotions explain differences in the diffusion of true vs. false social media rumors
title_full	Emotions explain differences in the diffusion of true vs. false social media rumors
title_fullStr	Emotions explain differences in the diffusion of true vs. false social media rumors
title_full_unstemmed	Emotions explain differences in the diffusion of true vs. false social media rumors
title_sort	emotions explain differences in the diffusion of true vs. false social media rumors
publisher	Nature Portfolio
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/cb6c8048719246ddad190966336e0327
work_keys_str_mv	AT nicolasprollochs emotionsexplaindifferencesinthediffusionoftruevsfalsesocialmediarumors AT dominikbar emotionsexplaindifferencesinthediffusionoftruevsfalsesocialmediarumors AT stefanfeuerriegel emotionsexplaindifferencesinthediffusionoftruevsfalsesocialmediarumors
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Emotions explain differences in the diffusion of true vs. false social media rumors

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