Fake news 'travels faster' than the truth, according to new study

Fake news stories were 70 per cent more likely to be re-tweeted, a new study found
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Martin Coulter11 March 2018

Fake news spreads faster than the truth, according to a study that examined 126,000 rumours and unverified stories spread on Twitter over the court of 11 years.

Academics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) also found that fake news was more likely to be shared by humans than artificial 'bot' accounts.

A team of researchers used six independent fact-checking sources, including Snopes and Urbanlegend, to identify whether the stories in the study were genuine.

Their study, published in academic journal Science Magazine, found that fake news stories were 70 per cent more likely to be re-tweeted than true stories.

They also found that it took around six times longer for a true story to reach 1,500 people compared to a fake one.

One of the co-authors of the paper, Soroush Vosoughi, wrote: "Twitter became our main source of news.

"I realised that...a good chunk of what I was reading on social media was rumours; it was false."

Psychology Prof Geoffrey Beattie, from Edge Hill University in Lancashire, told the BBC: "People want to share information that is newsworthy - in some sense the truth value is less of a concern.

"The point about gossip is, the best gossip is juicy gossip - the last thing people are worried about is whether it is true or not. It's whether it is plausible or not.

"We are saturated with news, so things have to be more and more surprising, or disgusting, to get attention."

“Fake news”, which is frequently a feature of US President Donald Trump’s rhetoric, was declared the word of 2017 by Collins Dictionary.

The British Government announced new plans to tackle fake news in January, with Theresa May saying the new national security communications unit would be tasked with “combating disinformation by state actors and others".

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