Abstract

Recent years have witnessed explosive growth of online social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, discussion forums and message boards, chat-rooms, and interlinked blogs. While social networks greatly facilitate information exchange and dissemination, they can also be vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation. Most online activity is organic information dissemination, ie, people innocently or unwittingly sharing information they find interesting with their followers, friends and social contacts. However, a significant portion of online activity is composed of deliberate attempts to manipulate how many people will see the information and how it will spread. Such campaigns seek to manipulate public opinion, disseminate rumors and misinformation. Insidious special interest campaigns try to mimic the appearance of genuine grassroots campaigns with broad support in a process sometimes called “astroturfing”(Ratkiewicz et al. 2011). It is well known that social networks of interconnected individuals also have mediating effects on health (Smith and Christakis 2008). Positive and accurate information obtained by social means can help individuals make better health care decisions. However, unhealthy practices and incorrect beliefs can also spread through social networks, and these are reinforced by shortcomings in health literacy. These social processes include, for example, propagation of influential memes such as medical myths (Vreeman and Carroll 2007; Goldberg 2010), and transmission of powerful norms affecting such choices as nutrition and smoking (Christakis and Fowler 2007; 2008).
Exposure to such harmful beliefs and …

Date

July 14, 2013

Authors

Marco Huesch, Greg Ver-Steeg, Aram Galstyan

Journal

Workshops at the twenty-seventh AAAI conference on artificial intelligence

Pages

31-34