Decades-old research about how and why people share rumors is even more relevant in a world with ... more Decades-old research about how and why people share rumors is even more relevant in a world with social media.
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Well-intentioned users sometimes enable the spread of misinformation due to limited context about... more Well-intentioned users sometimes enable the spread of misinformation due to limited context about where the information originated and/or why it is spreading. Building upon recommendations based on prior research about tackling misinformation, we explore the potential to support media literacy through platform design. We develop and design an intervention consisting of a tweet trajectory-to illustrate how information reached a user-and contextual cues-to make credibility judgments about accounts that amplify, manufacture, produce, or situate in the vicinity of problematic content (AMPS). Using a research through design approach, we demonstrate how the proposed intervention can help discern credible actors, challenge blind faith amongst online friends, evaluate the cost of associating with online actors, and expose hidden agendas. Such facilitation of credibility assessment can encourage more responsible sharing of content. Through our findings, we argue for using trajectory-based de...
Searching for signal and borrowing wi-fi: Understanding disaster-related adaptations to telecommunications disruptions through social media
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction
Repeat Spreaders and Election Delegitimization
Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media
This paper introduces and presents a first analysis of a uniquely curated dataset of misinformati... more This paper introduces and presents a first analysis of a uniquely curated dataset of misinformation, disinformation, and rumors spreading on Twitter about the 2020 U.S. election. Previous research on misinformation—an umbrella term for false and misleading content—has largely focused either on broad categories, using a finite set of keywords to cover a complex topic, or on a few, focused case studies, with increased precision but limited scope. Our approach, by comparison, leverages real-time reports collected from September through November 2020 to develop a comprehensive dataset of tweets connected to 456 distinct misinformation stories from the 2020 U.S. election (our ElectionMisinfo2020 dataset), 307 of which sowed doubt in the legitimacy of the election. By relying on real-time incidents and streaming data, we generate a curated dataset that not only provides more granularity than a large collection based on a finite number of search terms, but also an improved opportunity for ...
How do you solve a problem like misinformation?
Science Advances
Understanding key distinctions between misinformation/disinformation, speech/action, and mistaken... more Understanding key distinctions between misinformation/disinformation, speech/action, and mistaken belief/conviction provides an opportunity to expand research and policy toward more constructive online communication.
Analyzing Social Media Data to Understand How Disaster-Affected Individuals Adapt to Disaster-Related Telecommunications Disruptions
CoRe Paper – Social Media for Disaster Response and Resilience Proceedings of the 17th ISCRAM Conference, May 1, 2020
General Terms
We analyze microblog posts generated during two recent, concurrent emergency events in North Amer... more We analyze microblog posts generated during two recent, concurrent emergency events in North America via Twitter, a popular microblogging service. We focus on communications broadcast by people who were “on the ground ” during the Oklahoma Grassfires of April 2009 and the Red River Floods that occurred in March and April 2009, and identify information that may contribute to enhancing situational awareness (SA). This work aims to inform next steps for extracting useful, relevant information during emergencies using information extraction (IE) techniques.
Language Limitations in Rumor Research? Comparing French and English Tweets Sent During the 2015 Paris Attacks
The ubiquity of social media facilitates widespread participation in crises. As individuals conve... more The ubiquity of social media facilitates widespread participation in crises. As individuals converge online to understand a developing situation, rumors can emerge. Little is currently known about how online rumoring behavior varies by language. Exploring a rumor from the 2015 Paris Attacks, we investigate Twitter rumoring behaviors across two languages: French, the primary language of the affected population; and English, the dominant language of Internet communication. We utilize mixed methods to qualitatively code and quantitatively analyze rumoring behaviors across French and English language tweets. Most interestingly, temporal engagement in the rumor varies across languages, but proportions of tweets affirming and denying a rumor are very similar. Analyzing tweet deletions and retweet counts, we find slight (but not significant) differences between languages. This work offers insight into potential limitations of previous research of online rumoring, which often focused exclus...
Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2017
This panel brings together senior and junior members of the HCI community to answer two questions... more This panel brings together senior and junior members of the HCI community to answer two questions: (1) What issues raised by the 2016 U.S. election need to be addressed by the HCI community? and (2) How can the HCI community address these issues and have real, substantive impact? The panel includes a novel audience participation component that seeks to ensure maximum coverage of the HCI community's many diverse perspectives on these two questions.
Cross-platform Information Operations: Mobilizing Narratives & Building Resilience through both 'Big' & 'Alt' Tech
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2021
Despite increasing awareness and research about online strategic information operations, there re... more Despite increasing awareness and research about online strategic information operations, there remain gaps in our understanding, including how information operations leverage the wider information ecosystem and take shape on and across multiple social media platforms. In this paper we use mixed methods, including digital trace ethnography, to look beyond a single social media platform to the broader information ecosystem. We aim to understand how multiple social media platforms are used, in parallel and complementary ways, to achieve the strategic goals of online information operations. We focus on a specific case study: the contested online conversation surrounding Syria Civil Defense (the White Helmets), a group of first responders that assists civilians affected by the civil war within the country. Our findings reveal a network of social media platforms from which content is produced, stored, and integrated into the Twitter conversation. We highlight specific activities that sust...
Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
This research explores the alternative media ecosystem through a Twitter lens. Over a ten-month p... more This research explores the alternative media ecosystem through a Twitter lens. Over a ten-month period, we collected tweets related to alternative narratives — for example, conspiracy theories — of mass shooting events. We utilized tweeted URLs to generate a domain network, connecting domains shared by the same user, then conducted qualitative analysis to understand the nature of different domains and how they connect to each other. Our findings demonstrate how alternative news sites propagate and shape alternative narratives, while mainstream media deny them. We explain how political leanings of alternative news sites do not align well with a U.S. left-right spectrum, but instead feature an anti-globalist (versus globalist) orientation where U.S. Alt-Right sites look similar to U.S. Alt-Left sites. Our findings describe a subsection of the emerging alternative media ecosystem and provide insight in how websites that promote conspiracy theories and pseudo-science may function to con...
Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
The widespread adoption of networked information and communications technologies (i.e. ICTs) blur... more The widespread adoption of networked information and communications technologies (i.e. ICTs) blurs traditional boundaries between journalist and citizen. The role of the journalist is adapting to structural changes in the news industry and dynamic audience expectations. For researchers who seek to understand what, if any, distinct role journalists play in the production and propagation of breaking news, it is vital to be able to identify journalists in social media spaces. In many cases, this can be challenging due to the limited information and metadata about social media users. In this work, we use a supervised machine learning model to automatically distinguish journalists from non-journalists in social media spaces. Leveraging Twitter data collected from three crisis events of different types, we examine how profile information, social network structure, posting behavior and language distinguish journalists from others. Additionally, we evaluate how the performance of the journa...
Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
It is well-established that within crisis-related communications, rumors are likely to emerge. Fa... more It is well-established that within crisis-related communications, rumors are likely to emerge. False rumors, i.e. misinformation, can be detrimental to crisis communication and response; it is therefore important not only to be able to identify messages that propagate rumors, but also corrections or denials of rumor content. In this work, we explore the task of automatically classifying rumor stances expressed in crisisrelated content posted on social media. Utilizing a dataset of over 4,300 manually coded tweets, we build a supervised machine learning model for this task, achieving an accuracy over 88% across a diverse set of rumors of different types.
It has been difficult to address the impact and targeting of online foreign influence operations,... more It has been difficult to address the impact and targeting of online foreign influence operations, because researchers rarely have insight into the demographic characteristics of users who interact with content on large social media platforms. To address this gap, we combine insights from an anonymized estimated demographic dataset of Facebook data and a deeply-researched dataset of user interactions from Twitter. We use as a case study the well-characterized influence operation revolving around the Syria Civil Defence, also known as White Helmets, to understand how different audiences in the United States interact with “ecosystems'' of mainstream and alternative web domains according to age, gender, and Facebook’s political affinity score. We reflect on the unusual left-leaning tilt of alternative, conspiracy-oriented web domains in our dataset in light of the historical context of United States military interventions. We also discuss the ethical considerations of using an a...
Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Snapchat is a camera and ephemeral messaging application popular among young adults. Due to its s... more Snapchat is a camera and ephemeral messaging application popular among young adults. Due to its self-destructing content and playful features, Snapchat is often associated with more trivial uses. However, the platform has added functionality to support consumption of news. To understand how users perceive and interact with news content on Snapchat, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 19 users of the platform, focusing on their use of Snapchat during breaking news events, including the 2016/2017 US presidential election and inauguration. Through the lens of Network Gatekeeping, our research explains how users consume breaking news content on Snapchat. We unpack users' ambiguous perceptions of news reliability on Snapchat, and demonstrate how this contrasts with traditional news consumption. Our research also describes how users' mental models of how Snapchat works-specifically their theories about how the platform curates news content-shape their judgments of reliability, media bias and authenticity.
Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe - HAL - Diderot, Jun 4, 2020
ABOUT. This resource was created to support researchers who might be newly conducting crisis info... more ABOUT. This resource was created to support researchers who might be newly conducting crisis informatics research in light of the pandemic of 2020. It also might support creation of new course syllabi on related topics. It has been produced by members of the crisis informatics research community in May 2020 to consolidate and organize the literature on informatics of disaster mitigation, warning, response, and recovery. This guided bibliography is a living resource, and will continue to be updated. INSTRUCTIONS FOR NEW CONTRIBUTIONS. If you are a crisis informatics researcher and would like to contribute to this document, please add that research here as an initial step so that it can then be incorporated into the resource. If you have additional questions, please contact
The term, "bad actor" can suggest an individual that is easily identifiable by their of... more The term, "bad actor" can suggest an individual that is easily identifiable by their offensive or antisocial behavior—perhaps as suggested by the growing focus on online harassment. In this paper, we examine a set of accounts that do not fit this image. These accounts do not necessarily engage in vulgarity or abuse, but rather purposeful, targeted, and systematic manipulation. Consequently, we take the position that a useful definition of bad actors has to consider not just behaviors, but intent. We also argue that social media companies need to move beyond sanctioning "bad actors" to helping users understand our vulnerabilities within these information ecosystems.
This research examines the relationship between political homophily and organized trolling effort... more This research examines the relationship between political homophily and organized trolling efforts. This is accomplished by analyzing how Russian troll accounts were retweeted on Twitter in the context of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. This analysis shows that these conversations were divided along political lines, and that the examined trolling accounts systematically took advantage of these divisions. The findings of this research can help us better understand how to combat systematic trolling.
Infrastructures—both technical and human—are critical components of emergency response, helping t... more Infrastructures—both technical and human—are critical components of emergency response, helping to facilitate and shape both formal work practices and the improvisational work that individuals and organizations take part in as they address emergent challenges during unpredictable events. This research explores the relationships between infrastructure and collaborative work in this context, at a time when the infrastructures themselves are rapidly changing and/or under pressure to change due to the introduction of new technology. We interviewed 17 emergency workers from region that had recently experienced a major emergency response. These interviews illuminate weaknesses in some of the systems designed to support the information and communication needs of emergency workers, and demonstrate emergency workers assembling their own ICT infrastructures using familiar off-the-shelf tools like social media platforms and shared Google documents. These findings also highlight the importance ...
This empirical analysis examines the use of the live-streaming application Periscope in three cri... more This empirical analysis examines the use of the live-streaming application Periscope in three crises that occurred in 2015. Qualitative analyses of tweets relating to the Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia, Baltimore protests after Freddie Grey’s death, and Hurricane Joaquin flooding in South Carolina reveal that this recently deployed application is being used by both citizens and journalists for information sharing, crisis coverage and commentary. The accessibility and immediacy of live video directly from crisis situations, and the embedded chats which overlay on top of a video feed, extend the possibilities of real-time interaction between remote crowds and those on the ground in a crisis. These empirical findings suggest several potential challenges and opportunities for responders.
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Papers by Kate Starbird