research-article

Digital Wildfires: Propagation, Verification, Regulation, and Responsible Innovation

Authors:

Marina JirotkaAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), Volume 34, Issue 3

Article No.: 15, Pages 1 - 23

https://doi.org/10.1145/2893478

Published: 20 April 2016 Publication History

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Abstract

Social media platforms provide an increasingly popular means for individuals to share content online. Whilst this produces undoubted societal benefits, the ability for content to be spontaneously posted and reposted creates an ideal environment for rumour and false/malicious information to spread rapidly. When this occurs it can cause significant harm and can be characterised as a “digital wildfire.” In this article, we demonstrate that the propagation and regulation of digital wildfires form important topics for research and conduct an overview of existing work in this area. We outline the relevance of a range of work from the computational and social sciences, including a series of insights into the propagation of rumour and false/malicious information. We argue that significant research gaps remain—for instance, there is an absence of systematic studies on the effects of digital wildfires and there is a need to combine empirical research with a consideration of how the responsible governance of social media can be determined. We propose an agenda for research that establishes a methodology to explore in full the propagation and regulation of unverified content on social media. This agenda promotes high-quality interdisciplinary research that will also inform policy debates.

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Reviewer: Brad D. Reid

"Digital wildfire" describes the rapid spread of "rumor and false/malicious information." The authors provide an excellent review of research concerning how this occurs and where the gaps are in contemporary research. They subsequently discuss their own research agendas. Digital wildfires is truly an interdisciplinary topic, and both students and researchers in the computational and social sciences will want to read this excellent paper. The authors proceed in a very logical and easy-to-read format with major headings and subtopics. The major headings are "Introduction: Social Media, Unverified Content, and Digital Wildfires"; "The Propagation of Digital Wildfires on Social Media"; "Responses to Digital Wildfires by Individuals and Agencies"; "Ethical Dimensions of Digital Wildfires and Social Media Governance"; "Addressing Gaps in the Responsible Governance of Social Media: A Research Agenda"; and a "Conclusion." The authors provide excellent summaries of past research literature and open questions for future research. The authors state: "it is necessary to build on an empirically grounded methodology for the study and advancement of the responsible governance of social media. This requires an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates relevant contemporary developments in computational science, the social sciences, computer ethics, and RRI [responsible research and innovation]." They briefly outline six of their own research activities. These include the following: "scoping ethical questions in relation to digital wildfires"; "scoping existing governance mechanisms, their limitations, and possibilities for further mechanisms"; "continuing case studies of digital wildfires through the quantitative and qualitative examination of social media data sets"; "a Delphi panel" [stakeholder groups look for areas of consensus]; "ethnographic interviews and observations"; and an "ethical security map" [a practical tool to aid policy decision making]. The paper concludes with an exhaustive list of references. This presentation is worthy of your time. Online Computing Reviews Service

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Published In

ACM Transactions on Information Systems Volume 34, Issue 3

Special Issue on Trust and Veracity of Information in Social Media

May 2016

110 pages

ISSN:1046-8188

EISSN:1558-2868

DOI:10.1145/2915200

Editor:
Maarten de Rijke
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Issue’s Table of Contents

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 20 April 2016

Accepted: 01 February 2016

Revised: 01 February 2016

Received: 01 March 2015

Published in TOIS Volume 34, Issue 3

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Li JBin YPeng LYang YLi YJin HHuang Z(2024)Focusing on Relevant Responses for Multi-Modal Rumor DetectionIEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering10.1109/TKDE.2024.338969436:11(6225-6236)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2024
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Miri AKarimi-Shahanjarin AAfshari MTapak LBashirian S(2024)The impact of emotional vs rational message framing on social media users' detection and sharing of misinformation: an experimental studyJournal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society10.1108/JICES-10-2023-012422:3(321-330)Online publication date: 25-Jun-2024
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Chen L(2024)Combatting Climate Change Misinformation: Current Strategies and Future DirectionsEnvironmental Communication10.1080/17524032.2023.229975618:1-2(184-190)Online publication date: 8-Jan-2024
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Singh TKumari MGupta D(2024)Rumor identification and diffusion impact analysis in real-time text stream using deep learningThe Journal of Supercomputing10.1007/s11227-023-05726-x80:6(7993-8037)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2024
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Sanfilippo MZhu XYang S(2024)Sociotechnical governance of misinformation: An Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) paperJournal of the Association for Information Science and Technology10.1002/asi.24953Online publication date: 3-Oct-2024
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Ognibene DWilkens RTaibi DHernández-Leo DKruschwitz UDonabauer GTheophilou ELomonaco FBursic SLobo RSánchez-Reina JScifo LSchwarze VBörsting JHoppe UAprin FMalzahn NEimler S(2023)Challenging social media threats using collective well-being-aware recommendation algorithms and an educational virtual companionFrontiers in Artificial Intelligence10.3389/frai.2022.6549305Online publication date: 9-Jan-2023
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Pröllochs NFeuerriegel S(2023)Mechanisms of True and False Rumor Sharing in Social Media: Collective Intelligence or Herd Behavior?Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36100787:CSCW2(1-38)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
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Ognibene DDonabauer GTheophilou EBuršić SLomonaco FWilkens RHernández-Leo DKruschwitz U(2023)Moving Beyond Benchmarks and Competitions: Towards Addressing Social Media Challenges in an Educational ContextDatenbank-Spektrum10.1007/s13222-023-00436-323:1(27-39)Online publication date: 24-Feb-2023
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Hai-Jew S(2022)Frugal Living for Our Collective and Mutual #Bestlife on a Distributed and Global Electronic Hive MindResearch Anthology on Usage, Identity, and Impact of Social Media on Society and Culture10.4018/978-1-6684-6307-9.ch040(736-768)Online publication date: 10-Jun-2022
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