Monthly Archives: November 2015

False and True rumors look very differently on TwitterTrails

About TwitterTrails, Case Studies, False Claims, True Claims

News of Turkish airplane shooting down a Russian one over the Turkish-Syrian border has dominated the news and the social media lately. We investigated the rumor within hours after it appeared (24 Nov. 2015) and you can see the ressults of the analysis here: http://twittertrails.wellesley.edu/~trails/stories/investigate.php?id=462776628

This was not the first time a rumor of this kind emerged. About a month and a half ago (10 Oct. 2015) an identical rumor had emerged. We had investigated that rumor too and you can see the results of our anaysis here: http://twittertrails.wellesley.edu/~trails/stories/investigate.php?id=134661966

Russian jet downing rumors

As you can see, based on the crowd’s reaction to the rumors, TwitterTrails was able to determine that the October rumor was false while the November one was true. The false rumor did not spread much and had a lot of skeptical tweets questioning its validity. On the other hand, the true rumor spread much higher and in terms of skepticism was undisputed.

Our understanding of the way the “wisdom of the crowd” works is that, when unbiased, emotionally cool observers see a rumor that seems suspicious, they usually react in one of two ways: They either do not retweet it, reducing its spread, or they may respond questioning the validity of the rumor, resulting in higher skepticism.

Continue reading False and True rumors look very differently on TwitterTrails →

Twitter’s increasing polarization about the refugee crisis via #RefugeesWelcome

Events and Memes

Since the Paris attacks in November, 2015, social media has become increasingly polarized and emotional when it comes to discussing the refugee crises.  On the 18th, the hashtag #RefugeesWelcome was trending on Twitter in the US.  The co-retweeted network visualizes just how polarized and international the debate is.

network

top-description-words-all
The co-retweeted network of the #RefugeesWelcome data, collected on 11/18. The largest groups are noted on the graph. Users are highly polarized, as well as grouping by language and location. The word clouds show the most common user-profile words for each group, with colors matching the graph (English stop words are filtered out).

On the left are three pro-refugee groups, differentiated by language and location.  The purple group is largely German; the green are Scottish, many identifying with the Scottish National Party; and the blue are American liberals.  On the right are four groups spreading anti-refugee messages.  In yellow, another group of Germans; the red, orange and pink groups are all English speaking, mostly American, with similar messages and identifying themselves with terms like #tcot and “christian.” 

The co-retweeted network graph is interactive on TwitterTrails, and includes a widget below the graph where you can view aggregated statistics on each group, including user languages, most used words in descriptions and most used hashtags.

You can explore this network on TwitterTrails:
http://twittertrails.wellesley.edu/~trails/stories/investigate.php?id=984767780

Comparison with past usage

#RefugeesWelcome was also trending on September 3rd, in reaction to the images of the body of a drowned Syrian toddler, Alyan Kurdi, washed up on a Turkish beach.  At this time, the network was not polarized, and although there are different groups shown they are mainly spreading the pro-refugee message.  

Continue reading Twitter’s increasing polarization about the refugee crisis via #RefugeesWelcome →

Strong emotions on Twitter let the false claim that 10,000 refugees arrived in New Orleans spread unchecked

Uncategorized

Various rumors have been spreading on social media–even Twitter, which usually moderates false claims–following the Paris attacks on November 13th, 2015.  We recently reported on Trump’s misattributed tweet earlier, and now we highlight another claim that is spreading in this emotionally charged environment: that 10,000 Syrian refugees (that’s apparently them in the image below, notably all young men) have recently arrived in New Orleans.

A photo which has been posted with the claim show the supposed refugees who arrived in New Orleans
A photo which has been posted with the claim show the supposed refugees who arrived in New Orleans

10,000 Syrian refugees have not arrived in New Orleans.  The image, according to snopes, was taken in Hungary in September 2015.  This claim, fueled by the emotional climate on social media due to the Paris attacks, a combination of anger, fear and increasing xenophobia, vastly inflated the reality of only two Syrian refugee families arriving in New Orleans. (Yet, the arrival has caused backlash from Louisiana republicans, including presidential candidate Bobby Jindal, adding to the momentum of false claims).  

Like the Trump tweet claim, this story has moderate spread for a false claim (as observed by TwitterTrails), and also very low skepticism.  Very little fact checking has affected the emotional spread of this claim.

spread

If you are familiar with the Twittertrails.com system you can explore the story on TwitterTrails, or keep reading to see how strong emotions manifest in the spreading of rumors on Twitter.
http://twittertrails.wellesley.edu/~trails/stories/investigate.php?id=647751846

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Did Donald Trump write an insensitive tweet about the Nov 13th attacks in Paris?

Uncategorized

tweetThe tweet on the right caught my attention this morning.  It contains a screenshot of Gérard Araud, French ambassador to the US replying to a tweet written by Donald Trump.  Trump calls the “tragedy in Paris” “interesting” given that France has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world and Araud calls Trump “repugnant” and lacking “human decency”.

My immediate reaction was skepticism: even Trump, now running for president, wouldn’t write such an insensitive tweet following November 13th’s tragic attacks.  So, after getting over the shock value of what I read, I went into fact checking mode.  It didn’t take very much research to poke holes in this claim.  The screenshot posted in the tweet shows the tweet by Trump was sent on January 7th; obviously not after the attacks.  I also checked Donald Trump’s twitter account, and quickly observed that the tweet was not in his timeline, and he had in fact tweeted prayers for Paris.  

However, the tweet by Trump is real and a quick google search found it (at the time of writing this, it has not been deleted):
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/552955167533174785
trump-tweet

Rather than being about the attacks on November 13th, the tweet was written in response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks, which happened January 7th, 2015.  (The tweet by Araud seems to be legitimate and has been mentioned by various sources, but has been deleted)

So how did so many people miss this fact?  

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Global warming denialists make lousy spammers

Case Studies,

nasa-tweetTwitterTrails is a system focused on studying how rumors and memes spread online, but it can also track efforts by spammers to promote spam messages on Twitter. In one such case, which we observed recently, global warming denialists online misrepresented an article posted by NASA to claim that NASA’s article effectively denies the existence of global warming. TwitterTrails discovered their effort and identified 115 of these denialists. Here’s what happened:

On October 30th, 2015, NASA posted an article about a study showing that the amount of ice in the Antarctic ice sheet has increased overall.  They tweeted about the article, summarizing it with: “Antarctica is overall accumulating ice, but parts have increased ice loss in last decades.”

Several news websites posted articles about the study which were widely shared on Twitter expressing overall skepticism about both the findings and their implications for global warming:

However, the link shared by far the most on Twitter a website called “The Real Strategy” which takes a very different spin on the NASA study:

NASA Debunked Global Warming Hoax in Study

You will not hear this on your mainstream “News” channels… A new study by NASA has proven that the global warming hoax is a myth, once and for all.

A study released by NASA on October 30 says that the amount of ice in the poles has increased steadily over the last several decades. What happened to Al Gore’s claim that the poles would be melted completely by this year? Obama was just filmed claiming that “Global Warming” is proven… How stupid are their audiences really? Has everyone been programmed to just accept what these liars tell them as gospel? This study proves that “Global Warming” is so bogus that the world is actually COOLING!

The story continues on to quote the NASA article at length to support its claim that climate change is a “hoax”. This story received widespread air time on Twitter; nearly 4,000 of the 8,700 tweets we collected in reference to the NASA article included a link to “The Real Strategy,” compared to just a few hundred links to other relevant articles (including NASA’s original).

So, does Twitter audience believe that NASA’s own study disproves global warming?  Not quite.   

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