A new study suggests that while most social media amplified COVID-19 conspiracy theories during the pandemic, Twitter successfully curbed its spread. Researchers surveyed people from 17 (mostly European) countries to collect self-reported measures of social media use and conspiracy thinking.
The study asked people about the social media platforms they used (Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube, or Messenger), and some questions about the most popular COVID-19-related conspiracy theories on social media. Participants were asked to what extent they believed the following statements (very certain it’s false/somewhat certain it’s false, uncertain whether it’s true or false, somewhat certain it’s true, very certain it’s true):
- The vaccine against the coronavirus has already been developed, but big pharmaceutical companies are hiding it from us to increase profit
- The coronavirus is a bioweapon that has been deliberately created by China to harm people
- The coronavirus is the accidental leak of a US military secret experiment
Answers to the three questions were highly correlated (meaning that people who believe in one conspiracy theory, were more likely to believe in the others). While engagement with Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp and Messenger were all associated with an increase in expressed conspiracy beliefs, engagement with Twitter was associated with a reduction in expressed conspiracy beliefs.
“On average, Twitter reduces conspiracy theory beliefs (CTB) by 3% on the conspiracy scale… YouTube increases CTB with between 2% and 3%, and WhatsApp between 1% and 2%.”
What explains the unique influence of twitter on conspiracy beliefs? Researchers offer a few possible explanations, although the study did not investigate them. One has to do with how the communities in these platforms are structured.
Social media platforms like Facebook and messaging services like WhatsApp/Messenger are built for interacting with family and friends. Also, relationships on these platforms are symmetrical, where if Person A follows Person B, it means Person B also Follows Person A. This is in stark contrast with Twitter, where interactions with strangers predominate and relationships are asymmetrical (number of followers and number of people one follows are highly unequal). For instance, as of today, Katy Perry has 108.7 million followers, but she only follows 236 people.
This means that content on Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger may be
- shared within more dense social networks compared to twitter,
“Information is more easily diffused in small and dense networks of mutual relationships, such as those people build with close relatives and high-school friends on Facebook or on Messenger services. Things are different in larger, open, one-directional, and asymmetrical networks, such as those people establish with celebrities, politicians, and journalists on Twitter.”
- more likely to come from homogenous sources than Twitter,
“it is possible that (on Twitter) conspiratorial content— when it appeared—could be debunked fast or possibly “drown out” with better quality information or the sheer volume of those willing to quickly jump in and correct misperceptions.”
- less likely to be debunked when conspiratorial, since people tend to want to avoid the scorn of friends and family (while strangers on twitter happily do so)
“Twitter’s environment offers quicker and sharper public scrutiny, leading to faster fact-checking and publicly debunking of misperceptions than on other platforms.”
Twitter was also quick to put in place moderation measures at the start of the pandemic to control spread of conspiratorial content. Facebook, in stark contrast, was slow to set up moderation measures. Researchers think this might be another reason for why the two platform had contrasting effects on people’s beliefs.
“Papakyriakopoulos et al. (2020) found that Facebook controlled the least number of posts about COVID-19-related conspiracy theories compared to Twitter, Reddit, and even 4chan.”
Read more about the study by Yannis Theocharis, Ana Cardenal, Soyeon Jin, Toril Aalberg, David Nicolas Hopmann, Jesper Strömbäck, Laia Castro, Frank Esser, Peter Van Aelst, Claes de Vreese, Nicoleta Corbu, Karolina Koc-Michalska, Joerg Matthes, Christian Schemer, Tamir Sheafer, Sergio Splendore, James Stanyer, Agnieszka, Stępińska, and Václav Štětka here.
