Game Of (Internet) Life: How Social Media Reacts To Questionable News

from the moving-towards-truth dept

On April 11, Princeton mathematician and the inventor of “Game of Life” John Horton Conway passed away from the coronavirus. Known as a “magical genius” whose curiosity extended beyond just mathematics, the passing was a devastating blow to many who loved the man.

Yet as news of his passing broke, an interesting scenario developed. Instead of a formal statement from the institution or his family, the news first appeared on Twitter. With no verifiable proof of the claim, many were left struggling to determine whether to believe the story.

This scenario––a questionable story that can be proven true or false in time––presents a challenge for combating the spread of false information online. As we have seen many times before on social media, stories are often shared prior to the information being verified. Unfortunately, this will increasingly occur––especially in an election year and during a pandemic. Therefore, examining how social media responded during this particular event can help better determine the rules and patterns that drive the spread of information online.

Around 2:00 pm EST on Saturday, April 11, news started to spread on social media that John Horton Conway had died. The main source was a tweet that came from a fellow mathematician, who expressed his condolences and shared a story of Conway writing a blog post for April Fool’s Day.

As the news began to spread, most individuals who saw the tweets accepted the information as true and began expressing condolences themselves.

However some started to question the news; mainly because the original tweet had no source verifying the claim. As time went on, people began to speculate that this may indeed be a hoax, and many began deleting and retracting earlier tweets; a void existed where a source should be.

Users filled that void with Wikipedia, a platform where any individual can make changes to the information on any given page. However, this led to a series of citation conflicts, where users would post and then others would delete the post, claiming a lack of source.

The confusion eventually died down as more individuals who knew John Horton Conway explained what had happened, and how they knew. Indeed, the account that first broke the news followed up later with an explanation of what happened. But in that brief window where questions arose, we received a glimpse into how social media reacts to questionable news. And as if discovering the rules to a “Game of Misinformation,” this teaches us a few important lessons about user behavior and how misinformation spreads over time.

First, most users quickly trusted the initial reports as the information filtered in. This is to be expected: research has shown that individuals tend to trust those in their social networks. And indeed, the mathematician whose tweet was the primary source, while not the closest person to the deceased, was in the same community. In other words, what he said had weight. Further, by linking an article in Scientific American, users may have made a connection between the news and the article, even when the tweet did specify that was not the case.

Because of this level of trust within networks, individuals must carefully consider the content and the context by which they share information. Rushing to post breaking news can cause significant harms when that information is incorrect. At the same time, presentation can also have a drastic impact on how the reader digests the information. In this case, linking to the Scientific American story provided interesting context about the man behind the name, but also could give the reader the impression that the article supported the claim that he had died. That is not to say that any tweets in this situation were hasty or ill-conceived, but individuals must remain mindful of how the information shared online is presented and may be perceived by the audience.

Second, people do read comments and replies. The original tweet or social media post may receive the most attention, but many users will scroll through the comments, especially those who post the original material. This leads to two key conclusions. First, users should critically examine information and wait for additional verification before accepting assertions as truth. Second, when information seems incorrect, or at least unverified, users can and should engage with the content to point out the discrepancy. This can mean the difference between a false story spreading between 1,000 people or 1,000,000 people before the information is verified/disproven. Again, while this will not stop the spread of false information outright, it can lead to retractions and a general awareness from other users, which will “flatten the misinformation curve”, so to speak.

Finally, when a void of sources exists, individuals may try to use other mediums or hastily reported news to bolster their point of view. In this case, so-called “edit wars” developed on John Conway’s Wikipedia page, with some writing that he had died while others removed the information. While it is impossible to say whether the same individuals who edited the Wikipedia page also used it as evidence to support the original tweet, it does highlight how easy it could be to use a similar method in the future. Users often have to rely on the word of a small number of individuals in the hours following the release of a questionable story. When this is the case, some may try to leverage the implicit trust we have in other institutions to bolster their claims and arguments. In this case, it was Wikipedia, but it could be others. Users must carefully consider the possible biases or exploits that exist with specific sources.

Like Conway’s Game of Life, there are patterns to how information spreads online. Understanding these patterns and the rules by which false information changes and grows will be critical as we prepare for the next challenge. Sadly, the story that spread earlier this month turned out to be true, but the lessons we can learn from it can be applied to similar stories moving forward.

Jeffrey Westling is a technology and innovation policy fellow at the R Street Institute, a free-market think tank based in Washington, D.C.

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Filed Under: converging on truth, disinformation, game of life, john horton conway, misinformation, skepticism, social media, trust


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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 29 Apr 2020 @ 3:26pm

    "users should critically examine information and wait for additional verification before accepting assertions as truth. "

    whoa whoa whoa!
    I don't have time for that nonsense!
    I have an identity to reinforce, and both certainty and righteous indignance to wallow in.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Great-Grandpa Eddie, 29 Apr 2020 @ 3:47pm

    Breaking news! Instant news reports are unreliable.

    A nice demonstration of two (hopefully) obvious issues with the always connected lives you young-ins live.

    First, everyone and their grandmother (well, maybe mother) wants and needs to be "FIRST POST" to get the eyeballs.
    Second, being first doesn't mean being right.

    Back in my day, we had to (gasp!) wait for the news! And funny thing was the long lead time provided a handy filter for mistakes (like declaring someone dead)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Bobvious, 29 Apr 2020 @ 4:02pm

    This reminds me of "Science Made Stupid"

    About a prediction of an earthquake that caused everyone/thing to panic, thus causing an earthquake. See page 38 via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_Made_Stupid and follow the links on this page to the freely available versions.

    This announcement rates somewhere between 3 and 5 on the Rictus Scale.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Bobvious, 29 Apr 2020 @ 4:06pm

    Re: critically examine information and wait for additional verif

    Or you could just formulate pandemic responses on-the-fly, live, in a press conference.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 29 Apr 2020 @ 4:50pm

    Re: Breaking news! Instant news reports are unreliable.

    Back in my day, we had to (gasp!) wait for the news! And funny thing was the long lead time provided a handy filter for mistakes (like declaring someone dead)

    Really? REALLY? Truman Defeats Dewey? Coal gas explosion in bunker cripples Battleship Maine? Ramesses routs Hittites as part of a triumphal campaign against Kadesh? How old are you now?

    The fact is, the news reports have always been as unreliable as the people who reported them.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 29 Apr 2020 @ 8:45pm

    Wow great point

    Another example: the FBI entrapped General Flynn. Everyone watching Hannity already knew that, but now EVERYONE KNOWS. Same difference, right?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. icon
    Diana Conway (profile), 30 Apr 2020 @ 7:28am

    Math Widow

    I told one friend of John's immediately after he died. I then had to frantically tell the rest of the family lest they hear it on the internet. I may as well have pulled out a bull horn. I did not have a chance to make a statement. I more or less accepted that John is public property and these things will happen.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    Bobvious, 30 Apr 2020 @ 4:23pm

    Re: Math Widow

    Hello Diana.

    Sorry to hear of John's passing. His work covered so many interesting and fun aspects of maths. I remember the Game of Life and work on automatons. Somewhere I'm sure I still have a book/magazine with the game in Basic code, and a few of my screensavers are variations of it.

    Friends and colleagues have worked with game theory and there is much good to be said about recreational maths.

    I think Randall Munroe summed it up with his homage to John, https://xkcd.com/2293/

    link to this | view in thread ]


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