Understanding the Role of Human Values in the Spread of Misinformation

Farrell, Tracie; Piccolo, Lara; Perfumi, Serena Coppolino and Alani, Harith (2019). Understanding the Role of Human Values in the Spread of Misinformation. In: Truth and Trust Online, Oct 4 & 5 2019, London, UK.

Abstract

Social media platforms are often implicated in the spread of misinformation for encouraging the behaviour of rapid-sharing without adequate mechanisms for verifying information. To counter this phenomena, much related research in computer science has been focusing on developing tools to detect misinformation, to rank fact-check-worthy claims, and to understand their spread patterns, while psychosocial approaches have been focused on understanding information literacy, ideology and partisanship. In this paper, we demonstrate through a survey of nearly 100 people that the Human Values could have a significant influence on the way people perceive and share information. We argue that integrating a valuesoriented perspective into computational approaches for handling misinformation could encourage misinformation prevention, and assist in predicting and ranking misinformation.