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Published on: November 15, 2014
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Lies, Damned Lies, and Social Media Following Extreme Events
Katie Byrd1,2, Richard S John1,2
1Department of Psychology, University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, California, USA.
Summary
People struggle to discern true from false social media posts during crises. Base rates of information influence accuracy, but error penalties do not significantly impact judgment, with political conservatism affecting performance differently across disaster types.
Area of Science:
- Social Psychology
- Communication Studies
- Information Science
Background:
- Social media is increasingly vital for crisis communication.
- Distinguishing true from false information online during emergencies is a critical challenge.
- Understanding public perception of information veracity is essential for effective crisis response.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how individuals evaluate the truthfulness of social media posts during crises.
- To examine the influence of information base rates and error penalties on truth discernment.
- To analyze demographic and cognitive factors, including political conservatism, affecting information accuracy.
Main Methods:
- A U.S. adult sample (N=588) evaluated 20 social media posts related to natural disasters and terror attacks.
- Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analyses were employed to assess classification performance.
- Manipulations included the base rate of true posts and incentivized error penalties.
Main Results:
- Participants performed better than chance in distinguishing true from false posts for both natural disasters and terror attacks.
- Information base rates significantly predicted accuracy (sensitivity, specificity), while error penalties did not.
- Political conservatives showed varied performance: worse for natural disaster falsehoods, better for terror attack falsehoods.
Conclusions:
- Individual thresholds for believing social media information are influenced by base rates but are generally underadjusted.
- Crisis communication strategies should consider the base rate of information to improve public discernment.
- Political ideology plays a complex role in how individuals process crisis-related information on social media.
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