How misinformation goes viral: a Truthy story

Indiana University researchers have spent more than three years on Truthy. They analyze the way information -- including misinformation -- spreads on Twitter, focusing on virality and how various communities share political discourse through hashtags, retweets, and mentions.

By understanding the way this sort of information organically spreads across the network, researchers hope to be able to distinguish more inorganic patterns. They have recently analyzed “political astroturfing” -- campaign or partisan groups tweeting under the guise of grassroots activity -- reported on the digital evolution of Occupy Wall Street, created framework to differentiate between spontaneous and manufactured Twitter memes, and studied whether information goes viral by spreading between communities or within them. Such knowledge carries potentially huge implications as more political activity and social interactions move online.