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

Author

Listed:
  • Renault, Thomas

    (Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne)

  • Restrepo-Amariles, David

    (HEC Paris)

  • Troussel, Aurore

    (HEC Paris)

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

  • Renault, Thomas & Restrepo-Amariles, David & Troussel, Aurore, 2024. "Collaboratively adding context to social media posts reduces the sharing of false news," HEC Research Papers Series 1519, HEC Paris.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebg:heccah:1519
    DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.4800565
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Content moderation; Fake news; Information diffusion; Social media;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K10 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - General (Constitutional Law)

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