Corrective Information Does Not Necessarily Curb Social Disruption

TL;DR

This study models how misinformation and corrective information spread on social media impact social disruption, revealing that corrective information often exceeds misinformation in spread and can sometimes cause unintended behaviors like panic buying.

Contribution

It introduces a regression model to quantify the societal impact of misinformation and corrective information diffusion, focusing on real-world effects during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Findings

Corrective information spread more extensively than misinformation.

Corrective information can lead to behaviors like excessive purchasing.

Impact depends on the relative diffusion levels of misinformation and correction.

Abstract

The spread of misinformation can cause social confusion. The authenticity of information on a social networking service (SNS) is unknown, and false information can be easily spread. Consequently, many studies have been conducted on methods to control the spread of misinformation on social networking sites. However, few studies have examined the impact of the spread of misinformation and its corrections on society. This study models the impact of the reduction of misinformation and the diffusion of corrective information on social disruption, and it identifies the features of this impact. In this study, we analyzed misinformation regarding the shortage of toilet paper during the 2020 COVID-19 epidemic, its corrections, and the excessive purchasing caused by this information. First, we analyze the amount of misinformation and corrective information spread on SNS, and we create a regression model to estimate the real-world impact of misinformation and its correction. This model is used to analyze the change in real-world impact corresponding to the change in the diffusion of misinformation and corrective information. Our analysis shows that the corrective information was spread to a much greater extent than the misinformation. In addition, our model reveals that the corrective information was what caused the excessive purchasing behavior. As a result of our further analysis, we found that the amount of diffusion of corrective information required to minimize the impact on the real world depends on the amount of the diffusion of misinformation.