Do Tweeters know the credibility of tweets?

As ubiquitous computing has the Internet has become more accessible more and more people flock to social media to express themselves and to stay up to speed with new trending topics. Twitter is one of the popular social media sites/applications that is being used with 316 million active users [1] (it is important to note that I am unsure of the credibility of these stats as I could not find official stats published by Twitter). As more and more people use it as a source of information the study by Morris et al is quite relevant.

 

The paper highlighted that while users are viewing tweets from authors they know within their network credibility is not much of an issue as when they are using search engine to view trending topics with contributions of authors that they do not know. Despite not being a qualitative study the study followed concepts of grounded theory to better evaluate what makes tweets credible. The study was divided into 3 phases: (1) an observational study to note what features users looked at when reviewing tweets, (2) Survey to measure influence of features on perceived credibility of tweets, and (3) Experiments to understand the influence of features such as image, username and content have on perceived credibility. Each phase of the study built on the findings on the previous phases. This allowed the authors to identify that when reviewing tweets usernames and location tag of tweet significantly impact the perceived credibility of tweets. They also found that when rating the credibility of a tweet the truthfulness of a tweet does not lead to users finding it more credible. The relevance of ascertaining what makes a tweet seem credible is important to both spectators that read tweets and active users that tweet as a lot of people rely on it as a source of information. A study by Kwak et al found that 85% of trending topics on twitter are headline news [2].

 

From my perspective the issue of credibility and twitter as a source of information is relevant when health information is being shared. A study found that the 2^nd most common category of twitter posts regarding antibiotics are giving advice and information on how and when to take antibiotics. The study found that tweets disseminating wrong information regarding flu and antibiotics reached a172,571 followers[3]. On the other hand credible authors are finding twitter to be a credible tool to communicate health information. A Brooklyn based primary health clinic has indicated that the use of social media such as twitter for health communication has increased its cost-effectiveness and popularity among the community it caters to [4]. Therefore, work should build on this study to find ways to (1) inform users on the credibility of tweets, (2) inform users on how to evaluate credibility, and (3) possible ways to automate credibility screening that is easily accessible by users (currently, twitter.grader.com allows social media marketers to evaluate their credibility).

 

The article I found that builds on the topic of tweet credibility is “Measuring the credibility of Arabic text content in twitter” by BinSultan et al.

 

1. http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/march-2013-by-the-numbers-a-few-amazing-twitter-stats/
2. Kwak, H., Lee, C., Park, H., & Moon, S. (2010, April). What is Twitter, a social network or a news media?. In Proceedings of the 19th international conference on World wide web(pp. 591-600). ACM.
3. Scanfeld, D., Scanfeld, V., & Larson, E. L. (2010). Dissemination of health information through social networks: Twitter and antibiotics. American journal of infection control, 38(3), 182-188.
4. Hawn, C. (2009). Take two aspirin and tweet me in the morning: how Twitter, Facebook, and other social media are reshaping health care. Health affairs,28(2), 361-368.