The Influence of Knowing the Source of Information on Readers’ Perceptions. An Exploratory Study on Twitter

Disinformation, fake news or misinformation are well-known problems in social networks. Nevertheless, the readers play an active role-part because they consume and propagate such information. In this paper, we wonder how the readers perceive the information by identifying the source of information. The work presented in this paper details the exploratory study we conducted to check whether knowing the source of information influence people's decision when identifying types of information, using a classification of information based on argumentation. Thus, we analysed the information that is spread on Twitter, a digital social network that works as a micro-blog where users can post short open messages in real-time, which we know as tweets, and researchers can access information about them. The results obtained through the application of statistical tests and their contrast with graphic methods show that the decision of people that know the source does not influence when identifying as “fact or data”, “opinion or judgment” and “counterargument”. However, the opposite occurs for the type of information labelled as “argument”. In addition, the results reveal that opinions spread more than facts on Twitter.