Abstract
Social Media in recent times have become a platform for gathering information. However, over the years the instances of misinformation have increased. More than others the microblogging site Twitter has been on the radar for spreading misinformation. This is an exploratory study of the contents that were found and fact-checked as misinformation involving political content. The data was gathered from various fact-checking Twitter handles and online websites that have shared their corpus of content on misinformation in Twitter, however, only political content was utilised for the study. Tweets were analysed and results showcased that blue tick twitter handles (verified accounts) belonging to political personalities, celebrities, and organisations were also involved along with bots in the creation and spreading of misinformation most of the time without fact checking or verifying the information. It was also found that tweets categorised as misinformation mostly contained texts and photos and more often than not the photo involved were either photoshopped or framed to support a false claim. These photos and some videos had description provided along with it were false. It was also found that there was high engagement with these tweets. Among such engagements, there were some Twitter handles that identified the tweet as false or misinformation. This study explores the role of Twitter as a source of political misinformation, at the same time suggests a scope with the social responsibility perspective to identify and counter such misinformation rather than just spreading it without verifying.
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
2022 Special Focus—Democratic Disorder: Disinformation, the Media and Crisis in a Time of Change
KEYWORDS
SOCIAL MEDIA, POLITICAL MISINFORMATION, TWITTER, FAKE NEWS, POLITICAL COMMUNICATION
