While Twitter provides an unprecedented opportunity to learn about breaking
news and current events as they happen, it often produces skepticism among
users as not all the information is accurate but also hoaxes are sometimes
spread. While avoiding the diffusion of hoaxes is a major concern during
fast-paced events such as natural disasters, the study of how users trust and
verify information from tweets in these contexts has received little attention
so far. We survey users on credibility perceptions regarding witness pictures
posted on Twitter related to Hurricane Sandy. By examining credibility
perceptions on features suggested for information verification in the field of
Epistemology, we evaluate their accuracy in determining whether pictures were
real or fake compared to professional evaluations performed by experts. Our
study unveils insight about tweet presentation, as well as features that users
should look at when assessing the veracity of tweets in the context of
fast-paced events. Some of our main findings include that while author details
not readily available on Twitter feeds should be emphasized in order to
facilitate verification of tweets, showing multiple tweets corroborating a fact
misleads users to trusting what actually is a hoax. We contrast some of the
behavioral patterns found on tweets with literature in Psychology research.Comment: Pre-print of paper accepted to Social Network Analysis and Mining
(Springer