Fake news on Reddit is not shared nearly as often as posts with proven truth - in fact, almost twice as often. This is shown by an analysis by Ohio State University . Researchers Robert Bond and Kelly Garrett analyzed posts posted between 2016 and 2018 that had already been fact-checked. Over 10,000 contributions, some true and some false, were examined and evaluated.

Reddit: Platform makes the difference

As early as 2018, a study showed that fake news is spread more often and more widely on Twitter than truthful posts.

“The viral spread of false reports is due, among other things, to the fact that they sometimes specifically trigger outrage and invite users to spread them further.”

Digitalization expert Thomas R. Köhler

Garrett also cites the structure of the website as a problem. Twitter is often limited to shorter messages that do not necessarily invite a fact-based discussion. By dividing them into so-called “subreddits”, there are more guidelines and this means that posts can be checked more quickly and clearly for their truthfulness, it is said.

“Fact checkers and artificial intelligence help, among other things, to decide what is true or false. But you can't trust it 100 percent because many posts contain very subtle fake news that gets lost in the fact check."

Digitalization expert Thomas R. Köhler

Social web as a source of information

Posts with verified information that is true are, on average, commented on almost twice as often as false ones. The experts have also found that truthful articles also lead to longer conversations. It can also be seen that commentators check fake news more quickly.

Young people in particular are at risk from the spread of false reports.

“Since young generations in particular are increasingly obtaining their information via social media platforms, there will be an increased risk of fake news spreading in the future.”

Digitalization expert Thomas R. Köhler

Source:

Press release
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