Suchergebnisse

The claim of Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, that it was possible to influence voting behavior by using data mined from the social platform Facebook created a sudden fear in its users of being manipulated; consequently, even the market price of the social platform was shocked.We propose a case study analyzing the effect of this data scandal not only on Facebook stock price, but also on the whole stock market. To such a scope, we consider 15-minutes prices and returns of the set of the NASDAQ-100 components before and after the Cambridge Analytica case. We analyze correlations and Mutual Information among components finding that assets become more correlated and their Mutual Information grows higher. We also observe that correlation and Mutual Information are mutually increasing and seem to follow a master curve. Hence, the market appears more fragile after the Cambridge Analytica event. In fact, as it is well-known in finance, an increase in the average value of correlations augments the systemic risk (i.e., all the market can collapse as a whole) and decreases the possibility of allocating a safe investment portfolio.

The claim of Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, that it was possible to influence voting behavior by using data mined from the social platform Facebook created a sudden fear in its users of being manipulated; consequently, even the market price of the social platform was shocked.We propose a case study analyzing the effect of this data scandal not only on Facebook stock price, but also on the whole stock market. To such a scope, we consider 15-minutes prices and returns of the set of the NASDAQ-100 components before and after the Cambridge Analytica case. We analyze correlations and Mutual Information among components finding that assets become more correlated and their Mutual Information grows higher. We also observe that correlation and Mutual Information are mutually increasing and seem to follow a master curve. Hence, the market appears more fragile after the Cambridge Analytica event. In fact, as it is well-known in finance, an increase in the average value of correlations augments the systemic risk (i.e., all the market can collapse as a whole) and decreases the possibility of allocating a safe investment portfolio.

In this work we study, on a sample of 2.3million individuals, how Facebook users consumed different information at the edge of political discussion and news during the last Italian electoral competition. Pages are categorized, according to their topics and the communities of interests they pertain to, in (a) alternative information sources (diffusing topics that are neglected by science and main stream media); (b) online political activism; and (c) main stream media. We show that attention patterns are similar despite the different qualitative nature of the information, meaning that unsubstantiated claims (mainly conspiracy theories) reverberate for as long as other information. Finally, we classify users according to their interaction patterns among the different topics and measure how they responded to the injection of 2788 false information. Our analysis reveals that users which are prominently interacting with conspiracists information sources are more prone to interact with intentional false claims.

In this work we present a thorough quantitative analysis of information consumption patterns of qualitatively different information on Facebook. Pages are categorized, according to their topics and the communities of interests they pertain to, in a) alternative information sources (diffusing topics that are neglected by science and main stream media); b) online political activism; and c) main stream media. We find similar information consumption patterns despite the very different nature of contents. Then, we classify users according to their interaction patterns among the different topics and measure how they responded to the injection of 2788 false information (parodistic imitations of alternative stories). We find that users prominently interacting with alternative information sources ? i.e. more exposed to unsubstantiated claims ? are more prone to interact with intentional and parodistic false claims

Abstract
Online social media foster the creation of active communities around shared narratives. Such communities may turn into incubators for conspiracy theories—some spreading violent messages that could sharpen the debate and potentially harm society. To face these phenomena, most social media platforms implemented moderation policies, ranging from posting warning labels up to deplatforming, i.e. permanently banning users. Assessing the effectiveness of content moderation is crucial for balancing societal safety while preserving the right to free speech. In this article, we compare the shift in behavior of users affected by the ban of two large communities on Reddit, GreatAwakening and FatPeopleHate, which were dedicated to spreading the QAnon conspiracy and body-shaming individuals, respectively. Following the ban, both communities partially migrated to Voat, an unmoderated Reddit clone. We estimate how many users migrate, finding that users in the conspiracy community are much more likely to leave Reddit altogether and join Voat. Then, we quantify the behavioral shift within Reddit and across Reddit and Voat by matching common users. While in general the activity of users is lower on the new platform, GreatAwakening users who decided to completely leave Reddit maintain a similar level of activity on Voat. Toxicity strongly increases on Voat in both communities. Finally, conspiracy users migrating from Reddit tend to recreate their previous social network on Voat. Our findings suggest that banning conspiracy communities hosting violent content should be carefully designed, as these communities may be more resilient to deplatforming.

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the defining events of our time. National Governments responded to the global crisis by implementing mobility restrictions to slow down the spread of the virus. To assess the impact of those policies on human mobility, we perform a massive comparative analysis on geolocalized data from 13 M Facebook users in France, Italy, and the UK. We find that lockdown generally affects national mobility efficiency and smallworldness—i.e., a substantial reduction of long-range connections in favor of local paths. The impact, however, differs among nations according to their mobility infrastructure. We find that mobility is more concentrated in France and UK and more distributed in Italy. In this paper we provide a framework to quantify the substantial impact of the mobility restrictions. We introduce a percolation model mimicking mobility network disruption and find that node persistence in the percolation process is significantly correlated with the economic and demographic characteristics of countries: areas showing higher resilience to mobility disruptions are those where Value Added per Capita and Population Density are high. Our methods and findings provide important insights to enhance preparedness for global critical events and to incorporate resilience as a relevant dimension to estimate the socio-economic consequences of mobility restriction policies.

The wide availability of user-provided content in online social media facilitates the aggregation of people around common interests, worldviews, and narratives. However, the World Wide Web (WWW) also allows for the rapid dissemination of unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories that often elicit rapid, large, but naive social responses such as the recent case of Jade Helm 15––where a simple military exercise turned out to be perceived as the beginning of a new civil war in the United States. In this work, we address the determinants governing misinformation spreading through a thorough quantitative analysis. In particular, we focus on how Facebook users consume information related to two distinct narratives: scientific and conspiracy news. We find that, although consumers of scientific and conspiracy stories present similar consumption patterns with respect to content, cascade dynamics differ. Selective exposure to content is the primary driver of content diffusion and generates the formation of homogeneous clusters, i.e., "echo chambers." Indeed, homogeneity appears to be the primary driver for the diffusion of contents and each echo chamber has its own cascade dynamics. Finally, we introduce a data-driven percolation model mimicking rumor spreading and we show that homogeneity and polarization are the main determinants for predicting cascades' size.

In response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, several national governments have applied lockdown restrictions to reduce the infection rate. Here we perform a massive analysis on near-real-time Italian mobility data provided by Facebook to investigate how lockdown strategies affect economic conditions of individuals and local governments. We model the change in mobility as an exogenous shock similar to a natural disaster. We identify two ways through which mobility restrictions affect Italian citizens. First, we find that the impact of lockdown is stronger in municipalities with higher fiscal capacity. Second, we find evidence of a segregation effect, since mobility contraction is stronger in municipalities in which inequality is higher and for those where individuals have lower income per capita. Our results highlight both the social costs of lockdown and a challenge of unprecedented intensity: On the one hand, the crisis is inducing a sharp reduction of fiscal revenues for both national and local governments; on the other hand, a significant fiscal effort is needed to sustain the most fragile individuals and to mitigate the increase in poverty and inequality induced by the lockdown.

The Internet provides fast and ubiquitous communication that enables all kinds of communities and provides citizens with easy access to vast amounts of information, although the information is not necessarily verified and may present a distorted view of real events or facts. The Internet's power as an instant source of mass information can be used to influence opinions, which can have far-reaching consequences. This report's purpose is to provide input into the advisory processes that determine European support for research into the effects and management of Fake News (e.g. deliberate misinformation), Echo Chambers (e.g. closed communities where biases can be reinforced through lack of diversity in opinions), and the Internet's influence on social and political movements such as Populism; to provide insight into how innovation that takes these aspects into account can be supported. To address this aim, this report concerns socio-technical implications of the Internet related to the impact of closed communities and misinformation and makes recommendations derived from a consultation with domain experts concerning the research needed to address specific challenges. This study has used the Delphi Method, an iterative consultation mechanism aimed at consensus building within a targeted panel of experts. Three rounds of iteration were undertaken and a total of fourteen experts participated in all three rounds. The result of the consultation is 67 assertion statements that reached consensus amongst the experts in five broad themes, and these are presented in this report and summarised into key recommendations. The key overarching recommendation is that we need to understand how opinions are formed and are influenced in the current digital age. Investigations are needed to understand the underlying cognitive and emotional processes that enable peoples' opinions to be influenced in the context of a hybrid media system that mixes online and offline channels and broadcast and interactive social media.