The DOI matches its Crossref record; 51 of the 51 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Debunking in a world of tribes
Open accessAbstract
Social media aggregate people around common interests eliciting collective framing of narratives and worldviews. However, in such a disintermediated environment misinformation is pervasive and attempts to debunk are often undertaken to contrast this trend. In this work, we examine the effectiveness of debunking on Facebook through a quantitative analysis of 54 million users over a time span of five years (Jan 2010, Dec 2014). In particular, we compare how users usually consuming proven (scientific) and unsubstantiated (conspiracy-like) information on Facebook US interact with specific debunking posts. Our findings confirm the existence of echo chambers where users interact primarily with either conspiracy-like or scientific pages. However, both groups interact similarly with the information within their echo chamber. Then, we measure how users from both echo chambers interacted with 50,220 debunking posts accounting for both users consumption patterns and the sentiment expressed in their comments. Sentiment analysis reveals a dominant negativity in the comments to debunking posts. Furthermore, such posts remain mainly confined to the scientific echo chamber. Only few conspiracy users engage with corrections and their liking and commenting rates on conspiracy posts increases after the interaction.
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“This phenomenon is particularly pronounced in segregated networks, such as”
From A systematic review of echo chamber research: comparative analysis of conceptualizations, operationalizations, and varying outcomes (2025) · cites this paper as [50]
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe source backs part of the claim, not all of it — or backs it for a different population, condition or comparison.
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“They find that the amount of media a person consumes is anti-proportional to their chance of being trapped in an echo chamber, which contradicts findings by CSS studies [48,50,66,67] that find that engagement and echo chambers are positively correlated.”
From A systematic review of echo chamber research: comparative analysis of conceptualizations, operationalizations, and varying outcomes (2025) · cites this paper as [50]
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredIn the citing paper
“fact-checks are unlikely to reach everyone who was exposed to the initial misinformation (10);”
From Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media (2022) · cites this paper as [10]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Zollo, F., Bessi, A., Del Vicario, M., Scala, A., Caldarelli, G., Shekhtman, L., Havlin, S., & Quattrociocchi, W.
- Affiliations
- IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca (IT)
- Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori di Pavia (IT)
- Bar-Ilan University (IL)
- Corresponding author
- Zollo, Fabiana
- ORCID
- Venue
- PLOS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2017-07-24
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- e0181821
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5524392
- OpenAlex
- W2962740444
- Cited by
- 345
- References
- 51
- Citations by year
- 2026: 19 · 2025: 39 · 2024: 32 · 2023: 34 · 2022: 39 · 2021: 53 · 2020: 55 · 2019: 30 · 2018: 21 · 2017: 16
- FWCI
- 85.15
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- IRIS Research product catalog (Sapienza University of Rome) (submittedVersion)
- ARCA (Università Ca' Foscari Venezia) (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Complex Network Analysis Techniques
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Keywords
- debunking, misinformation, conspiracy beliefs, echo chambers, Facebook, social media, user engagement, sentiment analysis, scientific information, disintermediation
- MeSH terms
- Attention, Communication, Humans, United States, Social Networking, Social Media
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