Fake news has been a hot topic for a number of years, with both the Brexit referendum and the Trump election in 2016 bringing the topic to the top of people’s minds. New research from the University at Buffalo highlights how mainstream media may have played an unwitting role in the success of Russian-led fake news initiatives on Twitter.
The study found that in two years from the end of 2015, various Russian-backed accounts went from obscurity to celebrity status, with followers of around 100,000 common. This allowed the Internet Research Agency (IRA) to strategically deploy messages under the illusion of both authority and authenticity, while avoiding the scrutiny of journalists and the public alike.
Accumulating followers
The study suggests that followers were accumulated via retweets within ideological enclaves. What was interesting, however, is that both the mainstream and partisan news media also amplified the IRA’s messaging and therefore helped to fuel the growth in followers by embedding their tweets into content.
The researchers monitored four accounts in particular, with @TEN_GOP and @Pamela_Moore13 posing as conservative trolls, while @Crystal1Johnson and @glod_up imitated liberals.
“We did not observe the same effect on the liberal and conservative accounts,” the researchers say. “The two conservative accounts received a huge boost from mainstream media and hyperconservative media quoting tweets in their news stories, but we did not see mainstream media and hyperprogressive media doing the same thing for the two liberal accounts.”
The authors argue that their findings illustrate not only the modern media landscape but also how social media accounts often depend on the news media’s treatment of them as much as they do the particular dynamics of the platform at hand.
Spreading disinformation
The paper highlights how the attempts by mainstream media to integrate digital content with legacy content have unintentionally resulted in the spread of disinformation.
“Examining how and why these accounts grew so quickly and to such astounding proportions allows us to understand the mechanisms of influence accrual in the digital era,” the researchers say. “None of this was intentional. It’s about operational realties. But with this knowledge, we can begin to address and curtail the problem of disinformation.”
The authors fully understand the rationale behind digital content being incorporated into mainstream media, but urge publishers to do more diligence to ensure that the content they’re embedding is reliable and trustworthy.
“Social media content looks very attractive given the cost cutting realities in mainstream media and lost advertising revenue,” they conclude. “But it also demonstrates a vulnerability within the current media economy.
“Turning heads might also mean unintentionally contributing to the growth of fake accounts, which should be subject to the same questions of credibility as any other news source: Is this account in fact what it actually claims to be?”
