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Collaboratively adding context to social media posts reduces the sharing of false news

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Renault

    (UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

  • David Restrepo-Amariles

    (HEC Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales)

  • Aurore Troussel

    (HEC Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales)

Abstract

We build a novel database of around 285,000 notes from the Twitter Community Notes program to analyze the causal influence of appending contextual information to potentially misleading posts on their dissemination. Employing a difference in difference design, our findings reveal that adding context below a tweet reduces the number of retweets by almost half. A significant, albeit smaller, effect is observed when focusing on the number of replies or quotes. Community Notes also increase by 80% the probability that a tweet is deleted by its creator. The post-treatment impact is substantial, but the overall effect on tweet virality is contingent upon the timing of the contextual information's publication. Our research concludes that, although crowdsourced fact-checking is effective, its current speed may not be adequate to substantially reduce the dissemination of misleading information on social media.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Renault & David Restrepo-Amariles & Aurore Troussel, 2024. "Collaboratively adding context to social media posts reduces the sharing of false news," Working Papers hal-04759221, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-04759221
    DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.4800565
    as

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