Manipulating the Perception of Credibility in Refugee Related Social Media Posts

This paper describes a controlled web-based study (n=126), investigating whether the perception of the credibility of refugee-related Tweets can be influenced by cues already reported in the literature for social media content generally. We provide empirical evidence that both a Tweet's popularity and the presence of links -- even neutral links created by URL shortening services -- may increase a user's belief that the Tweet contains credible information. This is important because the propagation of false information relating to refugees on social media sites has been well documented

The Impact of Twitter Features on Credibility Ratings - An Explorative Examination Combining Psychological Measurements and Feature Based Selection Methods

In a post-truth age determined by Social Media channels providing large amounts of information of questionable credibility while at the same time people increasingly tend to rely on online information, the ability to detect whether content is believable is developing into an important challenge. Most of the work in that field suggested automated approaches to perform binary classification to determine information veracity. Recipients´ perspectives and multidimensional psychological credibility measurements have rarely been considered. To fill this gap and gain more insights into the impact of a tweet´s features on perceived credibility, we conducted a survey asking participants (N=2626) to rate the credibility of crises related tweets. The resulting 24.823 ratings were used for an explorative feature selection analysis revealing that mostly meta-related features like the number of followers of the author, the count of tweets produced and the ratio of tweet number and days since account creation affect credibility judgements

Polarisation and politicisation: the social media strategies of Indian political parties

Ahead of the general election in April and May 2019, Indian political parties are using social media aggressively to propagate their ideology, mobilise public opinion, set policy agendas, and discredit detractors. Since the 2014 general election, India's two major political parties -the Bharatiya Janata Party, which currently leads the coalition government, and the Indian National Congress, the main opposition party- have invested heavily in digital political campaigning. Political parties use social media to directly and continuously engage with voters. More so than traditional media, social media can amplify and mobilise political opinions and reach out to even the remotest geographical areas. Social media's unique value is that it allows for both mass messaging and micro-targeting. Bolstered by grass-roots campaigning, it is immensely powerful in moulding public opinion both in India and beyond. While facilitating civic engagement for a more participatory democracy, social media is also misused for propaganda, hate speech, and disinformation campaigns, which can undermine the pluralistic foundations of Indian democracy. Today, successful political campaigns rest on the innovative employment of social media, a trend that has made voters increasingly invested in politics and parties. But it has also provided grist for political polarisation, particularly in heterogeneous societies such as India. Given this scenario, foreign policy observers should prepare for a more politicised and domestically contested conducting of Indian foreign affairs in future

Fake News on Twitter related to the Refugee Crisis 2016 : An exploratory case study

Master's thesis in Information systems (IS501)Fake news has,inrecentyears,gained traction in the public media and as a research topic. Events such as the U.S 2016 presidential election, Brexit,the COVID-19 pandemic, amongst others,have seen tracesof large amounts offake news in social media. Social media sites like Twitter have enabled individuals, politicians,and companies to sharecontent and opinions witha large numberof peopleacross the globe. This opportunityfor mass communication has also ledtoTwitter becoming a place for fake news sharing. Various narratives by various actors partakein the same public discussions,andknowing whatis true and whatis fake is increasingly difficult. The purpose of this study wastoexamine and analyze a previously not studied dataset of 14.3 million tweets related to the 2016 refugee crisisand attemptto find traces of fake news. Theresearch approachchosenwas an exploratory case studywith mixed data analysis.The analyzed focusedon findingthe characteristicsof tweets, the most prominent topics,identifyingfake news,some of the actors(webpages) spreading fake news,and classify the type of fake news.To identify what content was fake, an extensive amount of literature in combination with three fact-checking services were utilized

Threat perception in online anti-migrant speech: a Slovene case study

The aim of this article is to describe the perception of refugees as a threat in Slovene online discourse, based on a critical analysis of commenters’ re­sponses to popular media posts at the height of the European migrant crisis. The proposition of the study is that the perception of migration as a threat is at the core of socially unacceptable discourse (SUD), portraying refugees and migrants as an undesirable and potentially dangerous presence. Within the framework of a comprehensive project examining public responses to media coverage of the arrival of migrants to Slovenia, online comments classified as SUD targeting refugees were extracted and annotated to reveal the recur­ring themes of threat perception. The analysis focused on describing the main categories of threat, as well as the various discursive features and strategies employed. Although the approach to observing this subject is essentially qual­itative, a general case-specific overview of the frequency and distribution of identifiable categories is also given

Threat perception in online anti-migrant speech: a Slovene case study

The aim of this article is to describe the perception of refugees as a threat in Slovene online discourse, based on a critical analysis of commenters’ re­sponses to popular media posts at the height of the European migrant crisis. The proposition of the study is that the perception of migration as a threat is at the core of socially unacceptable discourse (SUD), portraying refugees and migrants as an undesirable and potentially dangerous presence. Within the framework of a comprehensive project examining public responses to media coverage of the arrival of migrants to Slovenia, online comments classified as SUD targeting refugees were extracted and annotated to reveal the recur­ring themes of threat perception. The analysis focused on describing the main categories of threat, as well as the various discursive features and strategies employed. Although the approach to observing this subject is essentially qual­itative, a general case-specific overview of the frequency and distribution of identifiable categories is also given

Picture Power? The Contribution of Visuals and Text to Partisan Selective Exposure

Today’s high-choice media environment allows citizens to select news in line with their political preferences and avoid content counter to their priors. So far, however, selective exposure research has exclusively studied news selection based on textual cues, ignoring the recent proliferation of visual media. This study aimed to identify the contribution of visuals alongside text in selective exposure to pro-attitudinal, counter-attitudinal and balanced content. Using two experiments, we created a social media-style newsfeed with news items comprising matching and non-matching images and headlines about the contested issues of immigration and gun control in the U.S. By comparing selection behavior of participants with opposing prior attitudes on these topics, we pulled apart the contribution of images and headlines to selective exposure. Findings show that headlines play a far greater role in guiding selection, with the influence of images being minimal. The additional influence of partisan source cues is also considered