Major social media platforms increasingly adopt community-based fact-checking to address misinformation on their platforms. While previous research has largely focused on its effect on engagement (e. g., reposts), an understanding of how fact-checks affect a user's follower base is missing. In this study, we employ quasi-experimental methods to causally assess whether users lose followers after their posts are corrected via community fact-checks. Based on time-series data on follower counts for N = 4391 community fact-checked posts from X, we find that community fact-checks do not lead to meaningful declines in the follower counts of users who post misleading content. This suggests that followers of spreaders of misleading posts tend to remain loyal and do not view community fact-checks as a sufficient reason to disengage. Our findings underscore the need for complementary interventions to more effectively disincentivize the production of misinformation on social media.

Community-based fact-checking systems, such as Community Notes on X (formerly Twitter), aim to mitigate online misinformation by surfacing annotations judged helpful by contributors with diverse viewpoints. While prior work has shown that the platform's bridging-based algorithm effectively selects helpful notes at the time of display, little is known about how evaluations change after notes become visible. Using a large-scale dataset of 437,396 community notes and 35 million ratings from over 580,000 contributors, we examine the stability of helpful notes and the rating dynamics that follow their initial display. We find that 30.2% of displayed notes later lose their helpful status and disappear. Using interrupted time series models, we further show that note display triggers a sharp increase in rating volume and a significant shift in rating leaning, but these effects differ across rater groups. Contributors with viewpoints similar to note authors tend to increase supportive ratings, while dissimilar contributors increase negative ratings, producing systematic post-display polarization. Counterfactual analyses suggest that this post-display polarization, particularly from dissimilar raters, plays a substantial role in note disappearance. These findings highlight the vulnerability of consensus-based fact-checking systems to polarized rating behavior and suggest pathways for improving their resilience.

Political elites play an important role in the proliferation of online misinformation. However, an understanding of how fact-checking platforms pick up politicized misinformation for fact-checking is still in its infancy. Here, we conduct an empirical analysis of mentions of U.S. political elites within fact-checked statements. For this purpose, we collect a comprehensive dataset consisting of 35,014 true and false statements that have been fact-checked by two major fact-checking organizations (Snopes, PolitiFact) in the U.S. between 2008 and 2023, i.e., within an observation period of 15 years. Subsequently, we perform content analysis and explanatory regression modeling to analyze how veracity is linked to mentions of U.S. political elites in fact-checked statements. Our analysis yields the following main findings: (i) Fact-checked false statements are, on average, 20% more likely to mention political elites than true fact-checked statements. (ii) There is a partisan asymmetry such that fact-checked false statements are 88.1% more likely to mention Democrats, but 26.5% less likely to mention Republicans, compared to fact-checked true statements. (iii) Mentions of political elites in fact-checked false statements reach the highest level during the months preceding elections. (iv) Fact-checked false statements that mention political elites carry stronger other-condemning emotions and are more likely to be pro-Republican, compared to fact-checked true statements. In sum, our study offers new insights into understanding mentions of political elites in false statements on U.S. fact-checking platforms, and bridges important findings at the intersection between misinformation and politicization.

Deploying links to professional fact-checking websites (so-called “snoping”) is a common misinformation intervention technique that can be used by social media users to refute misleading claims made by others. However, the real-world effect of snoping may be limited as it suffers from low visibility and distrust towards professional fact-checkers. As a remedy, X (formerly known as Twitter) recently launched its community-based fact-checking system “Community Notes” on which fact-checks are carried out by actual X users and directly shown on the fact-checked posts. Yet, an understanding of how fact-checking via Community Notes differs from regular snoping is largely absent. In this study, we empirically analyze differences in how contributors to Community Notes and Snopers select their targets when fact-checking social media posts. For this purpose, we collect and holistically analyze two unique datasets from X: (a) 25,912 community-created fact-checks from X's Community Notes platform, and (b) 52,505 “snopes” that debunk posts via fact-checking replies that link to professional fact-checking websites. We find that Notes contributors and Snopers focus on different targets when fact-checking social media content. For instance, Notes contributors tend to fact-check posts from larger accounts with higher social influence and are relatively less likely to emphasize the accuracy of non-misleading posts. Fact-checking targets of Notes contributors and Snopers rarely overlap; however, those overlapping exhibit a high level of agreement in the fact-checking assessment. Moreover, we demonstrate that Snopers fact-check social media posts at a higher speed. Altogether, our findings imply that different fact-checking approaches – carried out on the same social media platform – can result in vastly different social media posts getting fact-checked. This has important implications for future research on misinformation, which should not rely on a single fact-checking approach when compiling misinformation datasets. From a practical perspective, our findings imply that different fact-checking approaches complement each other and may help social media providers to optimize strategies to combat misinformation on their platforms.

Fake news undermines individuals’ ability to make informed decisions. However, the theoretical understanding of how users assess online news as real or fake has thus far remained incomplete. In particular, previous research cannot explain why users fall for fake news inadvertently and despite careful thinking. In this work, we study the role of affect when users assess online news as real or fake. We employ NeuroIS measurements as a complementary approach beyond self-reports, which allows us to capture affective responses in situ, i.e., directly in the moment they occur. We draw upon cognitive dissonance theory, which suggests that users experiencing affective responses avoid unpleasant information to reduce psychological discomfort. In our NeuroIS experiment, we measured affective responses based on electrocardiography and eye tracking. We find that lower heart rate variability and shorter mean fixation duration are associated with greater perceived fakeness and a higher probability of incorrect assessments, thus providing evidence of affective information processing. These findings imply that users may fall for fake news automatically and without even noticing. This has direct implications for information systems (IS) research and practice as effective countermeasures against fake news must account for affective information processing.

The social media platform "Parler'' has emerged into a prominent fringe community where a significant part of the user base are self-reported supporters of QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory alleging that a cabal of elites controls global politics. QAnon is considered to have had an influential role in the public discourse during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. However, little is known about QAnon supporters on Parler and what sets them aside from other users. Building up on social identity theory, we aim to profile the characteristics of QAnon supporters on Parler. We analyze a large-scale dataset with more than 600,000 profiles of English-speaking users on Parler. Based on users' profiles, posts, and comments, we then extract a comprehensive set of user features, linguistic features, network features, and content features. This allows us to perform user profiling and understand to what extent these features discriminate between QAnon and non-QAnon supporters on Parler. Our analysis is three-fold: (1) We quantify the number of QAnon supporters on Parler, finding that 34,913 users (5.5% of all users) openly report supporting the conspiracy. (2) We examine differences between QAnon vs. non-QAnon supporters. We find that QAnon supporters differ statistically significantly from non-QAnon supporters across multiple dimensions. For example, they have, on average, a larger number of followers, followees, and posts, and thus have a large impact on the Parler network. (3) We use machine learning to identify which user characteristics discriminate QAnon from non-QAnon supporters. We find that user features, linguistic features, network features, and content features, can - to a large extent - discriminate QAnon vs. non-QAnon supporters on Parler. In particular, we find that user features are highly discriminatory, followed by content features and linguistic features.

The storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 has led to the killing of 5 people and is widely regarded as an attack on democracy. The storming was largely coordinated through social media networks such as Twitter and "Parler". Yet little is known regarding how users interacted on Parler during the storming of the Capitol. In this work, we examine the emotion dynamics on Parler during the storming with regard to heterogeneity across time and users. For this, we segment the user base into different groups (e.g., Trump supporters and QAnon supporters). We use affective computing to infer the emotions in content, thereby allowing us to provide a comprehensive assessment of online emotions. Our evaluation is based on a large-scale dataset from Parler, comprising of 717,300 posts from 144,003 users. We find that the user base responded to the storming of the Capitol with an overall negative sentiment. Akin to this, Trump supporters also expressed a negative sentiment and high levels of unbelief. In contrast to that, QAnon supporters did not express a more negative sentiment during the storming. We further provide a cross-platform analysis and compare the emotion dynamics on Parler and Twitter. Our findings point at a comparatively less negative response to the incidents on Parler compared to Twitter accompanied by higher levels of disapproval and outrage. Our contribution to research is three-fold: (1) We identify online emotions that were characteristic of the storming; (2) we assess emotion dynamics across different user groups on Parler; (3) we compare the emotion dynamics on Parler and Twitter. Thereby, our work offers important implications for actively managing online emotions to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Misinformation on social media presents a major threat to modern societies. While previous research has analyzed the virality across true and false social media posts, not every misleading post is necessarily equally viral. Rather, misinformation has different characteristics and varies in terms of its believability and harmfulness – which might influence its spread. In this work, we study how the perceived believability and harmfulness of misleading posts are associated with their virality on social media. Specifically, we analyze (and validate) a large sample of crowd-annotated social media posts from Twitter’s Birdwatch platform, on which users can rate the believability and harmfulness of misleading tweets. To address our research questions, we implement an explanatory regression model and link the crowd ratings for believability and harmfulness to the virality of misleading posts on Twitter. Our findings imply that misinformation that is (i) easily believable and (ii) not particularly harmful is associated with more viral resharing cascades. These results offer insights into how different kinds of crowd fact-checked misinformation spreads and suggest that the most viral misleading posts are often not the ones that are particularly concerning from the perspective of public safety. From a practical view, our findings may help platforms to develop more effective strategies to curb the proliferation of misleading posts on social media.

Social media has become an indispensable channel for political communication. However, the political discourse is increasingly characterized by hate speech, which affects not only the reputation of individual politicians but also the functioning of society at large. In this work, we empirically analyze how the amount of hate speech in replies to posts from politicians on Twitter depends on personal characteristics, such as their party affiliation, gender, and ethnicity. For this purpose, we employ Twitter's Historical API to collect every tweet posted by members of the 117th U.S. Congress for an observation period of more than six months. Additionally, we gather replies for each tweet and use machine learning to predict the amount of hate speech they embed. Subsequently, we implement hierarchical regression models to analyze whether politicians with certain characteristics receive more hate speech. We find that tweets are particularly likely to receive hate speech in replies if they are authored by (i) persons of color from the Democratic party, (ii) white Republicans, and (iii) women. Furthermore, our analysis reveals that more negative sentiment (in the source tweet) is associated with more hate speech (in replies). However, the association varies across parties: negative sentiment attracts more hate speech for Democrats (vs. Republicans). Altogether, our empirical findings imply significant differences in how politicians are treated on social media depending on their party affiliation, gender, and ethnicity.

While false rumors pose a threat to the successful overcoming of the COVID-19 pandemic, an understanding of how rumors diffuse in online social networks is – even for non-crisis situations – still in its infancy. Here we analyze a large sample consisting of COVID-19 rumor cascades from Twitter that have been fact-checked by third-party organizations. The data comprises N = 10,610 rumor cascades that have been retweeted more than 24 million times. We investigate whether COVID-19 misinformation spreads more viral than the truth and whether the differences in the diffusion of true vs. false rumors can be explained by the moral emotions they carry. We observe that, on average, COVID-19 misinformation is more likely to go viral than truthful information. However, the veracity effect is moderated by moral emotions: false rumors are more viral than the truth if the source tweets embed a high number of other-condemning emotion words, whereas a higher number of self-conscious emotion words is linked to a less viral spread. The effects are pronounced both for health misinformation and false political rumors. These findings offer insights into how true vs. false rumors spread and highlight the importance of considering emotions from the moral emotion families in social media content.

Online real estate platforms have become significant marketplaces facilitating users’ search for an apartment or a house. Yet it remains challenging to accurately appraise a property’s value. Prior works have primarily studied real estate valuation based on hedonic price models that take structured data into account while accompanying unstructured data is typically ignored. In this study, we investigate to what extent an automated visual analysis of apartment floor plans on online real estate platforms can enhance hedonic rent price appraisal. We propose a tailored two-staged deep learning approach to learn price-relevant designs of floor plans from historical price data. Subsequently, we integrate the floor plan predictions into hedonic rent price models that account for both structural and locational characteristics of an apartment. Our empirical analysis based on a unique dataset of 9,174 real estate listings suggests that current hedonic models underutilize the available data. We find that (1) the visual design of floor plans has significant explanatory power regarding rent prices – even after controlling for structural and locational apartment characteristics, and (2) harnessing floor plans results in an up to 10.56 % lower out-of-sample prediction error. We further find that floor plans yield a particularly high gain in prediction performance for older and smaller apartments. Altogether, our empirical findings contribute to the existing research body by establishing the link between the visual design of floor plans and real estate prices. Moreover, our approach has important implications for online real estate platforms, which can use our findings to enhance user experience in their real estate listings.