Matthew R. DeVerna

Research

Peer-reviewed publications

1. Rumors in Retweet: Ideological Asymmetry in the Failure to Correct Misinformation

   Abstract

   Matthew R. DeVerna, Andy Guess, Adam Berinsky, Joshua Tucker, and John Jost

   Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2022.

   Rumors in Retweet: Ideological Asymmetry in the Failure to Correct Misinformation

   We used supervised machine-learning techniques to examine ideological asymmetries in online rumor transmission. Although liberals were more likely than conservatives to communicate in general about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings (Study 1, N = 26,422) and 2020 death of the sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein (Study 2, N = 141,670), conservatives were more likely to share rumors. Rumor-spreading decreased among liberals following official correction, but it increased among conservatives. Marathon rumors were spread twice as often by conservatives pre-correction, and nearly 10 times more often post-correction. Epstein rumors were spread twice as often by conservatives pre-correction, and nearly, eight times more often post-correction. With respect to ideologically congenial rumors, conservatives circulated the rumor that the Clinton family was involved in Epstein’s death 18.6 times more often than liberals circulated the rumor that the Trump family was involved. More than 96% of all fake news domains were shared by conservative Twitter users.

   Close

2. Online misinformation is linked to early COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy and refusal

   Abstract

   Francesco Pierri, Matthew R. DeVerna, Brea L. Perry, Kai-Cheng Yang, Alessandro Flammini, Filippo Menczer, and John Bryden

   Scientific Reports. 2022.

   Online misinformation is linked to early COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy and refusal

   Widespread uptake of vaccines is necessary to achieve herd immunity. However, uptake rates have varied across U.S. states during the first six months of the COVID-19 vaccination program. Misbeliefs may play an important role in vaccine hesitancy, and there is a need to understand relationships between misinformation, beliefs, behaviors, and health outcomes. Here we investigate the extent to which COVID-19 vaccination rates and vaccine hesitancy are associated with levels of online misinformation about vaccines. We also look for evidence of directionality from online misinformation to vaccine hesitancy. We find a negative relationship between misinformation and vaccination uptake rates. Online misinformation is also correlated with vaccine hesitancy rates taken from survey data. Associations between vaccine outcomes and misinformation remain significant when accounting for political as well as demographic and socioeconomic factors. While vaccine hesitancy is strongly associated with Republican vote share, we observe that the effect of online misinformation on hesitancy is strongest across Democratic rather than Republican counties. Granger causality analysis shows evidence for a directional relationship from online misinformation to vaccine hesitancy. Our results support a need for interventions that address misbeliefs, allowing individuals to make better-informed health decisions.

   Close

3. CoVaxxy: A Collection of English-Language Twitter Posts About COVID-19 Vaccines

   Abstract

   Matthew R. DeVerna, Francesco Pierri, Bao Tran Truong, John Bollenbacher, David Axelrod, Niklas Loynes, Christopher Torres-Lugo, Kai-Cheng Yang, Filippo Menczer, and John Bryden

   Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. 2021.

   CoVaxxy: A Collection of English-Language Twitter Posts About COVID-19 Vaccines

   With a substantial proportion of the population currently hesitant to take the COVID-19 vaccine, it is important that people have access to accurate information. However, there is a large amount of low-credibility information about vaccines spreading on social media. In this paper, we present the CoVaxxy dataset, a growing collection of English-language Twitter posts about COVID-19 vaccines. Using one week of data, we provide statistics regarding the numbers of tweets over time, the hashtags used, and the websites shared. We also illustrate how these data might be utilized by performing an analysis of the prevalence over time of high- and low-credibility sources, topic groups of hashtags, and geographical distributions. Additionally, we develop and present the CoVaxxy dashboard, allowing people to visualize the relationship between COVID-19 vaccine adoption and U.S. geo-located posts in our dataset. This dataset can be used to study the impact of online information on COVID-19 health outcomes (e.g., vaccine uptake) and our dashboard can help with exploration of the data.

   Close

Circulated working papers

• Identification and characterization of misinformation superspreaders on social media

  Abstract

  Matthew R. DeVerna, Rachith Aiyappa, Diogo Pacheco, John Bryden, and Filippo Menczer

  Identification and characterization of misinformation superspreaders on social media

  The world's digital information ecosystem continues to struggle with the spread of misinformation. Prior work has suggested that users who consistently disseminate a disproportionate amount of low-credibility content — so-called superspreaders — are at the center of this problem. We quantitatively confirm this hypothesis and introduce simple metrics to predict the top misinformation superspreaders several months into the future. We then conduct a qualitative review to characterize the most prolific superspreaders and analyze their sharing behaviors. Superspreaders include pundits with large followings, low-credibility media outlets, personal accounts affiliated with those media outlets, and a range of influencers. They are primarily political in nature and use more toxic language than the typical user sharing misinformation. We also find concerning evidence suggesting that Twitter may be overlooking prominent superspreaders. We hope this work will further public understanding of bad actors and promote steps to mitigate their negative impacts on healthy digital discourse.

  Close

• One year of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on Twitter

  Abstract

  Francesco Pierri, Matthew R. DeVerna, Kai-Cheng Yang, David Axelrod, John Bryden, and Filippo Menczer

  One year of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on Twitter

  Please see the text itself for the latest version of the abstract, as it is currently undergoing some edits ✍️.

  Close

Contact me

I would love to hear from anyone who is interested in:

• talking about my research
• collaborating on a project
• speaking to me about really anything at all 😎