The Secret Life of a Hashtag: An Analysis of #FakeNews on Twitter 2010-2017

Location

Room 207/205 Traditional Presentations

Document Type

Presentation

Start Date

24-2-2018 2:15 PM

End Date

24-2-2018 3:45 PM

Description

Fake news has been a problem in and out of the US for years now (Mozur & Scott, 2016) (Farand, 2017). The influence of fake news, to the psychologically adept, is minimal, but can create biases in those who are not informed of the falsehoods of their information or for those with lower levels of cognitive abilities (De Keersmaecker & Roets, 2017). While evidence shows that fake news is a less effective strategy from a business perspective (Song, Kim, Lee, & Jang, 2017), the evolution of the public’s awareness of the phenomenon has not been adequately explored through an analysis of social media. This 20-minute presentation will delve into this matter, and attempt to discover the social nature and narratives around fake news.

Drawing from a corpus of more than 200,000 tweets spanning seven years, this presentation will report on the trends, triggers, and important players in the emergence and continued development of the #FakeNews hashtag on Twitter. It will cover the little-known prehistory of the hashtag—which began life as a marker for satirical headlines—through its explosion in November-December 2016 and into its current use and meaning. Using keyword frequencies, LDA topic models, and sentiment analyses, we hope to show who (both groups and verified users) used the hashtag to refer to which topics and with what sentiment.

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Feb 24th, 2:15 PM Feb 24th, 3:45 PM

The Secret Life of a Hashtag: An Analysis of #FakeNews on Twitter 2010-2017

Room 207/205 Traditional Presentations

Fake news has been a problem in and out of the US for years now (Mozur & Scott, 2016) (Farand, 2017). The influence of fake news, to the psychologically adept, is minimal, but can create biases in those who are not informed of the falsehoods of their information or for those with lower levels of cognitive abilities (De Keersmaecker & Roets, 2017). While evidence shows that fake news is a less effective strategy from a business perspective (Song, Kim, Lee, & Jang, 2017), the evolution of the public’s awareness of the phenomenon has not been adequately explored through an analysis of social media. This 20-minute presentation will delve into this matter, and attempt to discover the social nature and narratives around fake news.

Drawing from a corpus of more than 200,000 tweets spanning seven years, this presentation will report on the trends, triggers, and important players in the emergence and continued development of the #FakeNews hashtag on Twitter. It will cover the little-known prehistory of the hashtag—which began life as a marker for satirical headlines—through its explosion in November-December 2016 and into its current use and meaning. Using keyword frequencies, LDA topic models, and sentiment analyses, we hope to show who (both groups and verified users) used the hashtag to refer to which topics and with what sentiment.