Scientists have unveiled a powerful new tool in the fight against the spread of fake news through social networking sites.
The tool, called Hoaxy, ‘visualises’ how claims made in fake news spread online.
"In the past year, the influence of fake news in the US has grown from a niche concern to a phenomenon with the power to sway public opinion," said Filippo Menczer, a professor at Indiana University (IU) in the US.
Users can enter a claim into the service’s website and see results that show both incidence of the claim in the media and attempts to fact-check it by independent organisations.
The site's search results display headlines that appeared on sites known to publish inaccurate, unverified or satirical claims based upon lists compiled and published by reputable news and fact-checking organisations.
A search of social shares of articles that make the claim, however, shows a clear rise in people sharing the story, with under 10 claims in July rising to hundreds by December.
Hoaxy's visualisations illustrate both ‘temporal trends’ and ‘diffusion networks’ as they relate to online claims and fact-checks, said Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia, a research scientist at the IU Network Science Institute.
Temporal trends plot the cumulative number of Twitter shares over time. Diffusion networks show how claims spread from person to person.
Twitter is currently the only social network tracked by Hoaxy, and only publicly posted tweets appear in the visualisations.
(With inputs from PTI)
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