Fake News Or Not: The Authenticity Of Trending Topics On Twitter

In this modern era of technology, data and information have never been this accessible to all. Through the different forms and media of communication, information has been disseminated in a wide-spread and fast-paced way. With the introduction of social media, it paved way for a universal means of transmission wherein just with the tip of your fingers you can connect with others. Twitter is "a microblogging service that has emerged as a new medium of communication in spotlight…" Unlike other social media, its users have the choice to follow others or just be followed by other users. Ways of responding to a tweet have evolved into "well-defined markup culture": a user can retweet or "RT" a tweet, an account is addressed through "@" followed by an account identifier, and "#" to signify a certain topic.

Twitter analyzes words, phrases or topics that are most tweeted by users and put them together under the trending topics section of Twitter. A hashtag is a "convention among Twitter users" wherein they are able to follow a thread of tweets and replies circulating a common topic. The trending topic is prefixed with a ‘#' character. Nowadays, trending topics on Twitter have become a source of news information; thus, it could be a possible medium of the propagation of fake news. The authenticity of a tweet is very vital since trending tweets significantly affect the perception of users in terms of their personal belief and political perspective.

Twitter has connected different types of people wherever, whenever or whomever they are since it is a social networking site. As time passes by, it now also has been considered as a news and information media. Twitter narrates "real-life" situations which reflect happenings in the real world. There are two sides this kind of media offers: the positive and negative effects of social media coverage of events. Firstly, the authorities can disseminate information for effective disaster management and propagation of important announcements. But one backlash of considering Twitter as a news media is that malicious entities can use this to spread rumors and fake news.

Twitter enables real-time propagation of information to a large a wide coverage of users, making it an ideal environment for the dissemination of breaking-news directly from the news source. As more people get involved in the interactions, social media streams become "accurate sensors of real-world events". To further exemplify, for every social phenomenon occurring in a place, may it be an earthquake, typhoon or even any forms of terrorism, Twitter has been able to propagate information regarding the incidents in a manner wherein it is faster than any other media of transmission. For example, the Chilean earthquake (2010) which "occurred off the coast of the Maule region of Chile on Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 06:34:14 UTC (03:34:14 local time)" The said earthquake is considered as the seventh strongest earthquake ever dated in the world history wherein it reached a magnitude of 8. 8 on the Richter scale and lasted for 90 seconds. A tsunami hit the shores of Chile right after the earthquake. An estimate of 500 was reported dead and more than 2 million people were affected by this incident. Twitter was able to give time-critical information and updates about the current condition and status of the people in Chile. May it be the missing or deceased people, availability of the different services, and any other topics related to the disaster. The earthquake and any related matters were able to reach the trending topics section of Twitter just after few hours of the said catastrophe.

In addition to Twitter being as a source of news, most especially during crisis times, it can also be a means of propagating important announcement or agendas. Prominent figures like politicians use Twitter on their political discourses. Political tweets influence the followers' political view and behavior in different degrees. For instance, John Boehner, a speaker from the House of Representatives in the United States, tweets a link to a website with energy policy information. Another is John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, posted a tweet linked to a news editorial praising his budget proposal for the state. Political leaders at the state level disperse information about themselves and about their agendas. Other political minds use Twitter to have one-way communication with their followers. By replying and retweeting the tweets of their followers, they were able to attract more followers. Some politicians direct and inform citizens about timely policy information. Other politicians interact with followers to receive feedbacks and improve government services.

Since it is used to distribute substantive and relevant content, the significance of the credibility of the tweets has increased. In addition, the wide pool of information along with the increasing number of users requires substantial effort to validate the credibility of each tweet. According to researchers, there are many factors that influence the credibility perception of users in whether to accept an information from a tweet or to filter false data. The importance of features and credentials of the tweet author significantly affect how a user perceives a tweet as credible or not. The features that signify a low credibility perception to its users were the poorly constructed tweets, a default image or a childish profile like a cartoon or animated picture. In addition, the follower-following ratio is a major factor in influencing the credibility perception of a tweet. Users tend to deem more credible a tweet from someone who has a significant number of followers in comparison to the number of their following. For content-related features, a tweet containing a link or a URL leading to a news credible website, and the existence of relevant tweets showing similar data was viewed more as credible than a tweet showing the news itself. The features also included the author influence (measured by followers, retweets and mention counts), topical expertise (background and history of tweets, having a relevant expertise or field in the topic) and reputation (whether an author is known, or who has an account verified by Twitter).

Culture has a substantial effect on behavior: it was found to be a factor for the influence of credibility perception of users. The researchers have studied the cultural differences in Twitter credibility perception. Firstly, research shows that gender influences the user's credibility perception. Male authors of tweets are deemed to be more credible than female authors. Second, the name of a tweet author next to his or her profile image has been found to affect readers' credibility perception. The way the name and username are presented has significantly affected the quality of the tweet. Tweets with a username are rated more highly than anonymous tweet). The location of the author has been found to be an important factor to consider, most especially in the political aspect. Authors from the same country in which an event occurred were perceived as more credible by users than those with no location indicated in their tweets.

Though there is a wide pool of accessible information in Twitter, not everything is reliable and credible. Some of the information shared and accessed on it is in real-time. The impact of any malicious activity, like spreading fake news and rumors need to be detected and stopped from spreading immediately. Such false and inaccurate information can lead to chaos and panic among citizens. For instance, the researchers conducted a study regarding the spread of fake images that were circulated during Hurricane Sandy. They were able to identify 10, 350 unique tweets containing fake images. They performed a characterization analysis, to understand the patterns of the spread of these fake images. 86% of the tweets spreading the fake images were retweets, hence very few were original tweets by users. Also, the results showed that the top 30 users resulted in 90% of retweets of the fake image. The results showed the lack of validation of credibility of tweets since users tend to retweet the images without checking the sources of the tweet.

Finally, since social media could be used to manipulate the flow of human dynamics and interactions, detecting anomalous activity can help prevent possible misuses of online social platforms. Since Twitter is not only a social media but is also considered as a news media and established an identity in crisis events, Twitter users' credibility perception has been considering many factors whether to accept an information or filter false data. Fake news has been prevalent in many forms of a medium so everyone must learn to always validate the authenticity of a tweet and the credibility of its sources. Truly, every user must learn to think before clicking.