Analysis of Information Sharing Behavior on Twitter and Proposal of Countermeasures to Prevent the Spread of Misinformation
Junichi Fuji (AY 2020)
The spread of misinformation has become a problem in many parts of the world. This is due to the proliferation of social media, where people have more opportunities to act as both recipients and disseminators of information. Since the dissemination of information in social media does not guarantee the ethical aspects that have been emphasized in traditional journalism, the recipients of information need to judge the reliability of the information. The issues of information sharing, information diffusion, and the spread of misinformation in social media have already been analyzed through online log analysis, user surveys, and psychological experiments, but research focusing on information selection and browsing behavior in social media, as well as groups that do not take action, is lacking. However, there is a lack of research focusing on information selection and browsing behavior in social media, as well as groups that do not take action.
In this study, we focus on information sharing behavior on Twitter, one of the social media platforms, and analyze the characteristics of information sharing behavior on Twitter and compare the group that takes information sharing behavior and the group that does not take information sharing behavior. We recorded the extent to which they read tweets displayed on Twitter and how they reacted to the tweets they read, and analyzed the results of the retrospective survey conducted by the experiment participants. It was found that participants who engaged in information sharing behaviors such as liking and retweeting tweets based on their interest and concern for the tweet content, while at the same time placing less importance on the reliability and novelty of the information compared to the group that did not engage in such behaviors.
In light of these findings, we discussed the inhibitory measures to prevent the spread of misinformation and proposed a plan to change the behavior that leads to the spread of misinformation.
(Translated by DeepL)