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Computer Science > Social and Information Networks

arXiv:2004.10399 (cs)
[Submitted on 22 Apr 2020 (v1), last revised 27 Aug 2020 (this version, v3)]

Title:Anger makes fake news viral online

Authors:Yuwei Chuai, Jichang Zhao
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Abstract:Fake news that manipulates political elections, strikes financial systems, and even incites riots is more viral than real news online, resulting in unstable societies and buffeted democracy. The easier contagion of fake news online can be causally explained by the greater anger it carries. The same results in Twitter and Weibo indicate that this mechanism is independent of the platform. Moreover, mutations in emotions like increasing anger will progressively speed up the information spread. Specifically, increasing the occupation of anger by 0.1 and reducing that of joy by 0.1 will produce nearly 6 more retweets in the Weibo dataset. Offline questionnaires reveal that anger leads to more incentivized audiences in terms of anxiety management and information sharing and accordingly makes fake news more contagious than real news online. Cures such as tagging anger in social media could be implemented to slow or prevent the contagion of fake news at the source.
Comments: All data used in this study can be publicly available through this https URL
Subjects: Social and Information Networks (cs.SI); Computers and Society (cs.CY)
Cite as: arXiv:2004.10399 [cs.SI]
  (or arXiv:2004.10399v3 [cs.SI] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2004.10399

Submission history

From: Jichang Zhao [view email]
[v1] Wed, 22 Apr 2020 05:37:17 UTC (8,573 KB)
[v2] Wed, 6 May 2020 13:06:49 UTC (8,125 KB)
[v3] Thu, 27 Aug 2020 09:07:02 UTC (8,133 KB)
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