Understanding the use of fauxtography on social media
Files
Accepted manuscript
Date
2021-06-07
DOI
Authors
Wang, Yuping
Tahmasbi, Fatemeh
Blackburn, Jeremy
Bradlyn, Barry
De Cristofaro, Emiliano
Magerman, David
Zannettou, Savvas
Stringhini, Gianluca
Version
Accepted manuscript
OA Version
Citation
Y. Wang, F. Tahmasbi, J. Blackburn, B. Bradlyn, E. De Cristofaro, D. Magerman, S. Zannettou, G. Stringhini. 2021. "Understanding the Use of Fauxtography on Social Media." AAAI International Conference on Web and Social Media. https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.11792
Abstract
Despite the influence that image-based communication has on
online discourse, the role played by images in disinformation
is still not well understood. In this paper, we present the first
large-scale study of fauxtography, analyzing the use of manipulated
or misleading images in news discussion on online communities.
First, we develop a computational pipeline geared to
detect fauxtography, and identify over 61k instances of fauxtography
discussed on Twitter, 4chan, and Reddit. Then, we
study how posting fauxtography affects engagement of posts
on social media, finding that posts containing it receive more
interactions in the form of re-shares, likes, and comments. Finally,
we show that fauxtography images are often turned into
memes by Web communities. Our findings show that effective
mitigation against disinformation need to take images into account,
and highlight a number of challenges in dealing with
image-based disinformation.