How Misinformation Spreads on WeChat
The Chinese social media application WeChat has over 980 million monthly active users. Similarly to other popular social media applications such as Facebook and Twitter, WeChat combines private messaging with an ability to release information to a large audience through public posts. However, unlike the other social media giants, WeChat users get the majority of their information from official accounts, or OAs that are not necessarily reputable. Since it is easy to create an OA, misinformation and fake news is rampant in WeChat, and the platform is not designed to best combat the spread of incorrect information.
These OAs generate and spread content to their subscribers, who then share the content in their private social groups and moments, or their news feed. Moments can only be viewed and shared with a user’s friend group, and there is no algorithm to filter out content appearing on moments. Therefore, information spreads rapidly and it may not be accurate.
In class, we learned about information cascades and diffusion and how people’s decisions are influenced by others. In this scenario, a user is more likely to believe in a certain content or news if people around the user also believe in it. Since a user only gets information from friends or OAs that the user is subscribed to, the user is surrounded by like-minded people who will likely conform to what everyone else is doing. Ultimately, if more friends agree with what an OA is generating than not, the user will probably go with the majority, and can lead to misinformation being spread.
Source: https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/wechat-misinformation-china.php