Combating Rumor Spread on Social Media: The Effectiveness of Refutation and Warning

Abstract

Twitter and other social media are now a major method of information exchange and dissemination. Although they can support rapid communication and sharing of useful information, they can also facilitate the spread of rumors, which contain unverified information. The purpose of the work reported here was to examine several design ideas for reducing the spread of health-related rumors in a Twitter-like environment. The results have shown that exposing people to information that refutes rumors or warns that the statement has appeared on rumor websites could reduce the spread of rumors. These results suggest that social media technologies can be designed such that users can self correct and inactivate potentially inaccurate information in their environment.