The spreading of unsubstantiated rumors on online social networks (OSN)
either unintentionally or intentionally (e.g., for political reasons or even
trolling) can have serious consequences such as in the recent case of rumors
about Ebola causing disruption to health-care workers. Here we show that
indicators aimed at quantifying information consumption patterns might provide
important insights about the virality of false claims. In particular, we
address the driving forces behind the popularity of contents by analyzing a
sample of 1.2M Facebook Italian users consuming different (and opposite) types
of information (science and conspiracy news). We show that users' engagement
across different contents correlates with the number of friends having similar
consumption patterns (homophily), indicating the area in the social network
where certain types of contents are more likely to spread. Then, we test
diffusion patterns on an external sample of $4,709$ intentional satirical false
claims showing that neither the presence of hubs (structural properties) nor
the most active users (influencers) are prevalent in viral phenomena. Instead,
we found out that in an environment where misinformation is pervasive, users'
aggregation around shared beliefs may make the usual exposure to conspiracy
stories (polarization) a determinant for the virality of false information.

在此论文中，作者证明了旨在量化信息消费模式的指标可能提供有关虚假声明传播的重要见解，通过分析意大利 Facebook 用户消费不同类型（科学和阴谋新闻）的信息，表明用户在不同内容上的参与度与具有类似消费模式的朋友数量成正相关，然后在 7109 份有意识的讽刺虚假声明的外部样本中测试扩散模式，发现在错误信息很普遍的环境中，围绕共有信念的用户聚合可能成为虚假信息的传播方式。

病毒性谣言：同质性与极化的作用

Viral Misinformation: The Role of Homophily and Polarization

The large availability of user provided contents on online social media
facilitates people aggregation around common interests, worldviews and
narratives. However, in spite of the enthusiastic rhetoric about the so called
{\em wisdom of crowds}, unsubstantiated rumors -- as alternative explanation to
main stream versions of complex phenomena -- find on the Web a natural medium
for their dissemination. In this work we study, on a sample of 1.2 million of
individuals, how information related to very distinct narratives -- i.e. main
stream scientific and alternative news -- are consumed on Facebook. Through a
thorough quantitative analysis, we show that distinct communities with similar
information consumption patterns emerge around distinctive narratives.
Moreover, consumers of alternative news (mainly conspiracy theories) result to
be more focused on their contents, while scientific news consumers are more
prone to comment on alternative news. We conclude our analysis testing the
response of this social system to 4709 troll information -- i.e. parodistic
imitation of alternative and conspiracy theories. We find that, despite the
false and satirical vein of news, usual consumers of conspiracy news are the
most prone to interact with them.

研究发现，在社交媒体上，信息消费者聚集在具有类似信息消费模式的独特叙事周围，尤其是在涉及科学与替代新闻时；而传播虚假和嘲讽性信息与阴谋论的新闻的常规受众是最愿意与其互动的。