Digital Disinformation and the Hidden Role of Citizens Revealed Through Social Network Analysis
Rebecca Adler-Nissen is currently doing groundbreaking research on disinformation at the University of Copenhagen and leads the Digital Disinformation research lab in the Copenhagen Center for Social Data Science. She has performed social network analyses of the spread of disinformation during the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, studying how disinformation was intentionally or unintentionally spread online about the Malaysian Airlines passenger flight that was shot down over Ukraine in 2014. The Russian and Ukrainian governments had very different stories about who shot down the plane, with each side blaming the other. Western media outlets were involved as well, reporting that pro-Russian separatists had downed the plane over Ukrainian airspace. After years of investigations, Russia was found responsible in 2018, but much of the uncertainty before this point was amplified on social media. Russia has been known as a state to create and spread disinformation online to benefit their regime and destabilize others, but what Adler-Nissen researched specifically who was responsible for propagating this disinformation online, as in previous academic studies of state-created disinformation, citizens are frequently assumed to be passive consumers of this disinformation.
Adler-Nissen examined the role of citizens in curating the stream of information, especially streams of disinformation generated by governments or major media bodies, through a network analysis of tweets. The analysis of the network was performed to determine if and who were the most central figures in the network created by the spread of information about the Malaysian flight, measuring it through in-degree centrality (number of accounts that have retweeted the given user), out-degree centrality (number of accounts that the user has retweeted) and betweenness (the extent to which users are between others in a network, often representing the shortest path between two users). Of the core group of users with the highest levels of centrality, 74.4% were citizens, compared to 1.6% being state institutions, 1.2% and 0.6% being public officials and politicians respectively, 6.6% being commercial and state media, and 6.2% being journalists. These results showed the high level of importance of citizens to the spreading of disinformation, transforming their previously perceived role of passive consumers into active curators through the network style of social media.
This study is reminiscent of the work we are doing in class currently exploring the power that comes with a certain position in a network. While many would assume that states, media, and high-power officials would hold a central role in information networks on social media, this analysis, based on their specific criteria on the definition of centrality to spreading information, found that most individuals with high centrality scores were citizens. This study is interesting because it automatically assumes that people with high centrality scores hold relatively higher influence over an event’s narrative when potentially position in the network would only explain one facet of actual power. Fame, credibility, and popularity could be additional contributors to a user’s actual influence over the spread of disinformation, but regardless this analysis of centrality in social networks applied to international conflict re-emphasizes the role and importance of social media to narrative creation, especially during conflict, and how it has disrupted traditional power distribution.
Cited: https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/94/5/975/5092080