Investigating Rumor Propagation with TwitterTrails

TL;DR

TwitterTrails is an interactive web tool that helps users investigate the origin, spread, and credibility of rumors on Twitter through visualizations and automated analysis, aiding journalists and the public.

Contribution

Introduces TwitterTrails, a novel tool for analyzing rumor propagation on Twitter with automated insights and visualizations to assess credibility and spread dynamics.

Findings

Automated identification of rumor originators and key propagators.

Visualization of burst activity and propagation timelines.

Correlation between audience skepticism and rumor credibility.

Abstract

Social media have become part of modern news reporting, used by journalists to spread information and find sources, or as a news source by individuals. The quest for prominence and recognition on social media sites like Twitter can sometimes eclipse accuracy and lead to the spread of false information. As a way to study and react to this trend, we introduce {\sc TwitterTrails}, an interactive, web-based tool ({\tt twittertrails.com}) that allows users to investigate the origin and propagation characteristics of a rumor and its refutation, if any, on Twitter. Visualizations of burst activity, propagation timeline, retweet and co-retweeted networks help its users trace the spread of a story. Within minutes {\sc TwitterTrails} will collect relevant tweets and automatically answer several important questions regarding a rumor: its originator, burst characteristics, propagators and main actors according to the audience. In addition, it will compute and report the rumor's level of visibility and, as an example of the power of crowdsourcing, the audience's skepticism towards it which correlates with the rumor's credibility. We envision {\sc TwitterTrails} as valuable tool for individual use, but we especially for amateur and professional journalists investigating recent and breaking stories. Further, its expanding collection of investigated rumors can be used to answer questions regarding the amount and success of misinformation on Twitter.