Rumor propagation on Facebook

Lada Adamic
University of Michigan

All social networks are substrates for the propagation of rumors, Facebook being no exception. In this study we analyze the appearance and propagation of rumors within Facebook whose topic and veracity have been documented on the site Snopes.com. We find that the rates of uploads, sizes of cascades, reception in the social network, and demographic susceptibility depend on the topic and veracity of the rumor. We further characterize the effect of comments containing Snopes links on stemming rumor propagation. This is joint work with Adrien Friggeri and Dean Eckles.


Back to Mathematics of Social Learning