In the first and only major study of its kind, researchers at MIT demonstrated that falsity on Twitter spreads quicker and further than truth. The researchers also noted that this is not a function of Twitter bots boosting falsehoods. Instead, the rate at which falsity spreads seems to be based on deep-seated human traits.
“False information online is often really novel and frequently negative,” said politics professor Brendan Nyhan in response to MIT’s research, adding that: “We know those are two features of information generally that grab our attention as human beings and that cause us to want to share that information with others – we’re attentive to novel threats and especially attentive to negative threats.”
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