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@article{nokey,

title = {Misunderstanding the harms of online misinformation},

author = {Budak, Ceren and Nyhan, Brendan and Rothschild, David M. and Thorson, Emily, and Watts, Duncan J. },

url = {https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07417-w#citeas},

doi = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07417-w},

year  = {2024},

date = {2024-06-05},

urldate = {2024-06-05},

journal = {Nature },

volume = {630 },

pages = {45-53},

abstract = {The controversy over online misinformation and social media has opened a gap between public discourse and scientific research. Public intellectuals and journalists frequently make sweeping claims about the effects of exposure to false content online that are inconsistent with much of the current empirical evidence. Here we identify three common misperceptions: that average exposure to problematic content is high, that algorithms are largely responsible for this exposure and that social media is a primary cause of broader social problems such as polarization. In our review of behavioural science research on online misinformation, we document a pattern of low exposure to false and inflammatory content that is concentrated among a narrow fringe with strong motivations to seek out such information. In response, we recommend holding platforms accountable for facilitating exposure to false and extreme content in the tails of the distribution, where consumption is highest and the risk of real-world harm is greatest. We also call for increased platform transparency, including collaborations with outside researchers, to better evaluate the effects of online misinformation and the most effective responses to it. Taking these steps is especially important outside the USA and Western Europe, where research and data are scant and harms may be more severe.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{nokey,

title = {Quantifying the impact of misinformation and vaccine-skeptical content on Facebook},

author = {Allen, Jennifer and Watts, Duncan J. and Rand, David G. },

url = {https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk3451},

year  = {2024},

date = {2024-05-31},

journal = {Science},

volume = {384},

issue = {6699},

abstract = {Low uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine in the US has been widely attributed to social media misinformation. To evaluate this claim, we introduce a framework combining lab experiments (total N = 18,725), crowdsourcing, and machine learning to estimate the causal effect of 13,206 vaccine-related URLs on the vaccination intentions of US Facebook users (N ≈ 233 million). We estimate that the impact of unflagged content that nonetheless encouraged vaccine skepticism was 46-fold greater than that of misinformation flagged by fact-checkers. Although misinformation reduced predicted vaccination intentions significantly more than unflagged vaccine content when viewed, Facebook users’ exposure to flagged content was limited. In contrast, unflagged stories highlighting rare deaths after vaccination were among Facebook’s most-viewed stories. Our work emphasizes the need to scrutinize factually accurate but potentially misleading content in addition to outright falsehoods.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{nokey,

title = {Deplatforming did not decrease Parler users’ activity on fringe social media},

author = {Ribeiro, Manoel Horta and Hosseinmardi, Homa and West, Robert and Watts, Duncan J.},

url = {https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/2/3/pgad035/7081430?login=false},

doi = {10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad035},

year  = {2023},

date = {2023-03-21},

journal = {PNAS Nexus},

volume = {2},

issue = {3},

abstract = {Online platforms have banned (“deplatformed”) influencers, communities, and even entire websites to reduce content deemed harmful. Deplatformed users often migrate to alternative platforms, which raises concerns about the effectiveness of deplatforming. Here, we study the deplatforming of Parler, a fringe social media platform, between 2020 January 11 and 2021 February 25, in the aftermath of the US Capitol riot. Using two large panels that capture longitudinal user-level activity across mainstream and fringe social media content (N = 112, 705, adjusted to be representative of US desktop and mobile users), we find that other fringe social media, such as Gab and Rumble, prospered after Parler’s deplatforming. Further, the overall activity on fringe social media increased while Parler was offline. Using a difference-in-differences analysis (N = 996), we then identify the causal effect of deplatforming on active Parler users, finding that deplatforming increased the probability of daily activity across other fringe social media in early 2021 by 10.9 percentage points (pp) (95% CI [5.9 pp, 15.9 pp]) on desktop devices, and by 15.9 pp (95% CI [10.2 pp, 21.7 pp]) on mobile devices, without decreasing activity on fringe social media in general (including Parler). Our results indicate that the isolated deplatforming of a major fringe platform was ineffective at reducing overall user activity on fringe social media.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{nokeyb,

title = {Beyond Playing 20 Questions with Nature: Integrative Experiment Design in the Social and Behavioral Sciences },

author = {Almaatouq, Abdullah and Griffiths, Thomas L. and Suchow, Jordan W. and Whiting, Mark E. and Evans, James and Watts, Duncan J. },

url = {https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/abs/beyond-playing-20-questions-with-nature-integrative-experiment-design-in-the-social-and-behavioral-sciences/7E0D34D5AE2EFB9C0902414C23E0C292#article},

doi = {10.1017/S0140525X22002874},

year  = {2022},

date = {2022-12-21},

urldate = {2022-12-21},

journal = {Behavioral and Brain Sciences},

abstract = {The dominant paradigm of experiments in the social and behavioral sciences views an experiment as a test of a theory, where the theory is assumed to generalize beyond the experiment's specific conditions. According to this view, which Alan Newell once characterized as “playing twenty questions with nature,” theory is advanced one experiment at a time, and the integration of disparate findings is assumed to happen via the scientific publishing process. In this article, we argue that the process of integration is at best inefficient, and at worst it does not, in fact, occur. We further show that the challenge of integration cannot be adequately addressed by recently proposed reforms that focus on the reliability and replicability of individual findings, nor simply by conducting more or larger experiments. Rather, the problem arises from the imprecise nature of social and behavioral theories and, consequently, a lack of commensurability across experiments conducted under different conditions. Therefore, researchers must fundamentally rethink how they design experiments and how the experiments relate to theory. We specifically describe an alternative framework, integrative experiment design, which intrinsically promotes commensurability and continuous integration of knowledge. In this paradigm, researchers explicitly map the design space of possible experiments associated with a given research question, embracing many potentially relevant theories rather than focusing on just one. The researchers then iteratively generate theories and test them with experiments explicitly sampled from the design space, allowing results to be integrated across experiments. Given recent methodological and technological developments, we conclude that this approach is feasible and would generate more-reliable, more-cumulative empirical and theoretical knowledge than the current paradigm—and with far greater efficiency.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}