Commentary

Twitter Is (Often) Wrong

This may not surprise anyone who is familiar with the Internet, but social media is not exactly trustworthy when it comes to communicating, you know, facts. That’s according to a new study by the American Press Institute’s Fact-Checking Project, which surveyed Twitter posts and found that incorrect or misleading tweets outnumber attempts to correct them by a ratio of at least three to one.

The study, conducted by researchers at Columbia University, used algorithmic analysis to identify around 100,000 tweets pertaining to major current events subjects including Ebola and Obamacare. In the case of Obamacare, in the first quarter of 2014 a number of news organizations reported that Obamacare would cause the loss of two million jobs, and many Twitter uses shared linked to stories containing this erroneous claim; in the first three months of 2014 93% of these tweets simply repeated the claim as true, while just 7% attempted to correct the error.

Regarding Ebola, there was widespread dissemination of misinformation about Ebola’s arrival in the U.S. and subsequent spread to several healthcare workers, and Twitter users again played a part in perpetuating inaccurate stories, including, for example, reporting about the possibility of airborne transmission. Meanwhile just 27% of tweets from the initial period of Ebola reporting attempted to correct the errors.

On the positive side, a separate API study also published this week found that presenting people with accurate information can be effective in correcting misperceptions caused by erroneous reporting or simple ignorance, at least in some cases. For example, the API discovered that 67% of Americans believed that China holds the majority of U.S. debt, when in fact it holds less than one tenth of the total. After being shown the correct information the number who still believed China holds the majority of U.S. debt fell to 45.4% (of course that’s still around half, but at least someone was listening).

The findings about inaccurate news on social media are especially germane in light of the growing numbers of Americans who get their news primarily from sources like Twitter and Facebook. According to the latest “State of the News Media” report from Pew, roughly half of American Web users get news about politics and government from Facebook, the same proportion who get it through local news.

Last month, Facebook was reportedly in talks with news publishers including the New York Times, BuzzFeed and National Geographic to host their content directly on its own site. News stories would be hosted on Facebook and the social network would share the ad revenue with the publishers.

 

4 comments about "Twitter Is (Often) Wrong".
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  1. Troy Johnson from AALBC.com, LLC, April 29, 2015 at 5:05 p.m.

    "Twiiter" is not wrong, it is the people who post there that are, which should be no surpise, you get what you pay for. 


    Why would the New York Times, BuzzFeed, and National Geographic reliquish what competitive advantage they have by given Facebook the content?  

  2. Troy Johnson from AALBC.com, LLC, April 29, 2015 at 5:06 p.m.

    "Twiiter" is not wrong, it is the people who post there that are, which should be no surpise, you get what you pay for. 


    Why would the New York Times, BuzzFeed, and National Geographic reliquish what competitive advantage they have by giving Facebook their content?  

  3. George Simpson from George H. Simpson Communications, April 29, 2015 at 5:59 p.m.

    Although the main stream media don't always get it right, they may well survive because they ARE mostly right. Social media is just like the rest of the Internet, you have to get to a trustworthy source.

  4. Nancy Roberts from Nancy C. Roberts & Associates, April 30, 2015 at 3:29 p.m.

    But... while people didn't have the debt ownership numbers right, the point being made (that 34% of an enormous US debt) is owned by foreign interests, the largest of which by far is China, is alarming and worth noting. People never get figures right - but trends can be observed through social media.

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