Publication Type

Conference Proceeding Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

11-2017

Abstract

Social media platforms are one of the fastest ways to disseminate information but they have also been used as a means to spread rumors. If left unchecked, rumors have serious consequences. Counter-rumors, messages used to refute rumors, are an important means of rumor curtailment. The objective of this paper is to examine the types of rumor and counter-rumor messages generated in Twitter in response to the falsely reported death of a politician, Lee Kuan Yew, who was Singapore’s first Prime Minister. Our content analysis of 4321Twitter tweets about Lee’s death revealed six categories of rumor messages, four categories ofcounter-rumor messages and two categories belonging to neither type. Interestingly, there were more counter-rumor messages than rumor messages. Our results thus suggest that, at least in the context of our study, online users do make an attempt to stop the spread of false rumors through counter-rumors.

Keywords

Content analysis, Counter rumor, Death hoax, Rumor correction, Social media, Twitter

Discipline

Digital Communications and Networking | Social Media

Research Areas

Data Science and Engineering

Publication

Digital libraries: Data, information, and knowledge for digital lives: 19th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries, ICADL 2017, Bangkok, Thailand, November 13-15, Proceedings

First Page

256

Last Page

266

ISBN

9783319702322

Identifier

10.1007/978-3-319-70232-2_22

Publisher

Springer

City or Country

Cham

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70232-2_22

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