Influencers and Influence: the dissemination of information in times of fake news and post-truth

Abstract

The end of 2023 was marked, on Brazilian social networks, by a tragedy: the death of a 22-year-old young woman, influenced by a relatively new phenomenon in the social spectrum, the so-called fake news. Given the repercussion of the fact, this work has as its object of study the phenomenon of information dissemination on social networks, under the scope of social network X (formerly Twitter). Based on an information diffusion model, this research has, as a general objective, to evaluate the dissemination of information on social network. Specific objectives include investigating the relevance of the information dissemination model to the issue of disseminating fake news; test the information diffusion model with experimental data obtained from the social network X and validate the results obtained in numerical simulations arising from the information diffusion model. It is concluded, therefore, that the lower the estimated real reach of a post, the longer the information dissemination process will take, which would justify the introduction of joint work between different profiles in partnership with bots to increase the engagement of a post.