Zannettou, S;
Caulfield, T;
De Cristofaro, E;
Kourtellis, N;
Leontiadis, I;
Sirivianos, M;
Stringhini, G;
(2017)
The Web Centipede: Understanding How Web Communities Influence Each Other Through the Lens of Mainstream and Alternative News Sources.
In: Uhlig, S and Maennel, O, (eds.)
IMC '17: Proceedings of the 2017 Internet Measurement Conference.
(pp. pp. 405-417).
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM): New York, NY, USA.
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Abstract
As the number and the diversity of news outlets on the Web grows, so does the opportunity for "alternative" sources of information to emerge. Using large social networks like Twitter and Facebook, misleading, false, or agenda-driven information can quickly and seamlessly spread online, deceiving people or influencing their opinions. Also, the increased engagement of tightly knit communities, such as Reddit and 4chan, further compounds the problem, as their users initiate and propagate alternative information, not only within their own communities, but also to different ones as well as various social media. In fact, these platforms have become an important piece of the modern information ecosystem, which, thus far, has not been studied as a whole. In this paper, we begin to fill this gap by studying mainstream and alternative news shared on Twitter, Reddit, and 4chan. By analyzing millions of posts around several axes, we measure how mainstream and alternative news flows between these platforms. Our results indicate that alt-right communities within 4chan and Reddit can have a surprising level of influence on Twitter, providing evidence that "fringe" communities often succeed in spreading alternative news to mainstream social networks and the greater Web.
| Type: | Proceedings paper |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Web Centipede: Understanding How Web Communities Influence Each Other Through the Lens of Mainstream and Alternative News Sources |
| Event: | 2017 Internet Measurement Conference (IMC '17) |
| Location: | London, UK |
| Dates: | 30 October 2017 - 03 November 2017 |
| ISBN-13: | 9781450351188 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1145/3131365.3131390 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1145/3131365.3131390 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | Fake News, Social Networks, Influence, Twitter, Reddit, 4chan |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1575800 |
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