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Free keywords:
cs.SI,Computer Science, Computers and Society, cs.CY
Abstract:
This paper presents a multi-platform computational pipeline geared to
identify social media posts discussing (known) conspiracy theories. We use 189
conspiracy claims collected by Snopes, and find 66k posts and 277k comments on
Reddit, and 379k tweets discussing them. Then, we study how conspiracies are
discussed on different Web communities and which ones are particularly
influential in driving the discussion about them. Our analysis sheds light on
how conspiracy theories are discussed and spread online, while highlighting
multiple challenges in mitigating them.