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A Study of Misinformation in WhatsApp groups with a focus on the Brazilian Presidential Elections.

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Philip HowardAuthors Info & Claims

WWW '19: Companion Proceedings of The 2019 World Wide Web Conference

Pages 1013 - 1019

https://doi.org/10.1145/3308560.3316738

Published: 13 May 2019 Publication History

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Abstract

There are rising concerns over the spread of misinformation in WhatsApp groups and the potential impact on political polarization, hindrance of public debate and fostering acts of political violence. As social media use becomes increasingly widespread, it becomes imperative to study how these platforms can be used to as a tool to spread propaganda and manipulate audience groups ahead of important political events. In this paper, we present a grounded typology to classify links to news sources into different categories including ‘junk’ news sources that deliberately publish or aggregate misleading, deceptive or incorrect information packaged as real news about politics, economics or culture obtained from public WhatsApp groups. Further, we examine a sample of 200 videos and images, extracted from a sample of WhatsApp groups and develop a new typology to classify this media content. For our analysis, we have used data from 130 public WhatsApp groups in the period leading up to the two rounds of the 2018 Brazilian presidential elections.

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Cited By

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Santana CNogueira Ferrario M(2024)Platform Capitalism, Democratic Corrosion and the Consolidation of the Cybertariat in BrazilSSRN Electronic Journal10.2139/ssrn.3975901Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3975901
Wack MJalbert M(2024)Social Truth Queries as a Novel Method for Combating Misinformation: Evidence From KenyaThe International Journal of Press/Politics10.1177/19401612241301671Online publication date: 21-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612241301671
Agarwal DShahid FVashistha A(2024)Conversational Agents to Facilitate Deliberation on Harmful Content in WhatsApp GroupsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36870308:CSCW2(1-32)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3687030
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A Study of Misinformation in WhatsApp groups with a focus on the Brazilian Presidential Elections.

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WWW '19: Companion Proceedings of The 2019 World Wide Web Conference

May 2019

1331 pages

ISBN:9781450366755

DOI:10.1145/3308560

Editors:
Ling Liu
Georgia Tech, USA
,
Ryen White
Microsoft Research, USA

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 ACM 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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Published: 13 May 2019

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May 13 - 17, 2019

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Wack MJalbert M(2024)Social Truth Queries as a Novel Method for Combating Misinformation: Evidence From KenyaThe International Journal of Press/Politics10.1177/19401612241301671Online publication date: 21-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612241301671
Agarwal DShahid FVashistha A(2024)Conversational Agents to Facilitate Deliberation on Harmful Content in WhatsApp GroupsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36870308:CSCW2(1-32)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
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Wei ZXu XHui PChua TNgo CKumar RLauw HKa-Wei Lee R(2024)Digital Democracy at Crossroads: A Meta-Analysis of Web and AI Influence on Global ElectionsCompanion Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 202410.1145/3589335.3652003(1126-1129)Online publication date: 13-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3589335.3652003
Pacheco DChua TNgo CKa-Wei Lee RKumar RLauw H(2024)Bots, Elections, and Controversies: Twitter Insights from Brazil's Polarised ElectionsProceedings of the ACM Web Conference 202410.1145/3589334.3645651(2651-2659)Online publication date: 13-May-2024
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Social Debunking of Misinformation on WhatsApp: The Case for Strong and In-group Ties

Kidnapping WhatsApp Rumors during the search and rescue operation of three kidnapped youth

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