Images and Misinformation in Political Groups: Evidence from WhatsApp in India
Kiran Garimella, Dean Eckles
TL;DR
This study investigates the spread of images and misinformation in Indian political WhatsApp groups before the 2019 elections, revealing that about 13% of shared images are misinformation and exploring machine learning detection methods.
Contribution
The paper provides the first large-scale analysis of image-based misinformation in Indian political WhatsApp groups and evaluates machine learning approaches for detection.
Findings
13% of shared images are misinformation
Most misinformation images fall into three categories
Machine learning can predict misinformation but is sensitive to content shifts
Abstract
WhatsApp is a key medium for the spread of news and rumors, often shared as images. We study a large collection of politically-oriented WhatsApp groups in India, focusing on the period leading up to the 2019 Indian national elections. By labeling samples of random and popular images, we find that around 13% of shared images are known misinformation and most fall into three types of images. Machine learning methods can be used to predict whether a viral image is misinformation, but are brittle to shifts in content over time.
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