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The DOI matches its Crossref record; 18 of the 18 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Echo chambers and viral misinformation: Modeling fake news as complex contagion

Open access
Törnberg, Petter·2018·PLOS ONE

Abstract

The viral spread of digital misinformation has become so severe that the World Economic Forum considers it among the main threats to human society. This spread have been suggested to be related to the similarly problematized phenomenon of "echo chambers", but the causal nature of this relationship has proven difficult to disentangle due to the connected nature of social media, whose causality is characterized by complexity, non-linearity and emergence. This paper uses a network simulation model to study a possible relationship between echo chambers and the viral spread of misinformation. It finds an "echo chamber effect": the presence of an opinion and network polarized cluster of nodes in a network contributes to the diffusion of complex contagions, and there is a synergetic effect between opinion and network polarization on the virality of misinformation. The echo chambers effect likely comes from that they form the initial bandwagon for diffusion. These findings have implication for the study of the media logic of new social media.

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Metadata

Authors
Törnberg, P.
Venue
PLOS ONE
Published
2018-09-20
Volume
13
Issue
9
Pages
e0203958
ISSN
1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2890436397
Cited by
419
References
18
FWCI
76.89
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
gold

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Echo chambers and viral misinformation: Modeling fake news as complex contagion. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1371/journal.pone.0203958
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Törnberg, P. (2018). Echo chambers and viral misinformation: Modeling fake news as complex contagion. PLOS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0203958

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