Study uncovers how echo chambers provide the initial fuel for misinformation to go viral

New research sheds light on how the structure of online social networks causes misinformation to go viral on the internet. The findings, published in PLOS One, indicate that social “echo chambers” act like kindling that gives misinformation the initial flare up it needs to quickly spread. “While the link between ‘echo chambers’ and ‘fake news’ has been both widely discussed and been the subject of significant research effort, this discussion has largely left out the impact of the complex network dynamics that are so quintessential to online social media,” said study author Petter Törnberg, a sociologist from the University of Amsterdam.

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