An Exploratory Analysis of COVID Bot vs Human Disinformation Dissemination stemming from the Disinformation Dozen on Telegram

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Ng, Lynnette Hui Xian, Kloo, Ian, Carley, Kathleen M.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Ng, Lynnette Hui Xian
Kloo, Ian
Carley, Kathleen M.
author_facet Ng, Lynnette Hui Xian
Kloo, Ian
Carley, Kathleen M.
contents The COVID-19 pandemic of 2021 led to a worldwide health crisis that was accompanied by an infodemic. A group of 12 social media personalities, dubbed the ``Disinformation Dozen", were identified as key in spreading disinformation regarding the COVID-19 virus, treatments, and vaccines. This study focuses on the spread of disinformation propagated by this group on Telegram, a mobile messaging and social media platform. After segregating users into three groups -- the Disinformation Dozen, bots, and humans --, we perform an investigation with a dataset of Telegram messages from January to June 2023, comparatively analyzing temporal, topical, and network features. We observe that the Disinformation Dozen are highly involved in the initial dissemination of disinformation but are not the main drivers of the propagation of disinformation. Bot users are extremely active in conversation threads, while human users are active propagators of information, disseminating posts between Telegram channels through the forwarding mechanism.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_14203
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
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spellingShingle An Exploratory Analysis of COVID Bot vs Human Disinformation Dissemination stemming from the Disinformation Dozen on Telegram
Ng, Lynnette Hui Xian
Kloo, Ian
Carley, Kathleen M.
Computers and Society
Social and Information Networks
The COVID-19 pandemic of 2021 led to a worldwide health crisis that was accompanied by an infodemic. A group of 12 social media personalities, dubbed the ``Disinformation Dozen", were identified as key in spreading disinformation regarding the COVID-19 virus, treatments, and vaccines. This study focuses on the spread of disinformation propagated by this group on Telegram, a mobile messaging and social media platform. After segregating users into three groups -- the Disinformation Dozen, bots, and humans --, we perform an investigation with a dataset of Telegram messages from January to June 2023, comparatively analyzing temporal, topical, and network features. We observe that the Disinformation Dozen are highly involved in the initial dissemination of disinformation but are not the main drivers of the propagation of disinformation. Bot users are extremely active in conversation threads, while human users are active propagators of information, disseminating posts between Telegram channels through the forwarding mechanism.
title An Exploratory Analysis of COVID Bot vs Human Disinformation Dissemination stemming from the Disinformation Dozen on Telegram
topic Computers and Society
Social and Information Networks
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.14203