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What Do Retweets Indicate? Results from User Survey and Meta-Review of Research
Open accessAbstract
Arguably one of the most important features of Twitter is the support for “retweets” or messages re-posted verbatim by a user that were originated by someone else. Despite the fact that retweets are routinely studied and reported, many important questions remain about user motivation for their use and their significance. In this paper we answer the question of what users indicate when they retweet. We do so in a comprehensive fashion, by employing a user survey, a study of user profiles, and a meta-review of over 100 research publications from three related major conferences. Our findings indicate that retweeting indicates not only interest in a message, but also trust in the message and the originator, and agreement with the message contents. However, the findings are significantly weaker for journalists, some of whom beg to differ declaring so in their own user profiles. On the other hand, the inclusion of hashtags strengthens the signal of agreement, especially when the hashtags are related to politics. While in the past there have been additional claims in the literature about possible reasons for retweeting, many of them are not supported, especially given the technical changes introduced recently by Twitter.
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“While Mentions and Replies can have both negative and positive connotations, Retweets are traditionally considered as a form of social endorsement [26, 17]: Users tend to retweet and thus endorse content they agree with.”
From Influence of augmented humans in online interactions during voting events (2019) · cites this paper as [26]
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Stella, M., Cristoforetti, M., & De Domenico, M. (2019) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0214210 · Cited by 51
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Wischnewski, M., Ngo, T., Bernemann, R., Jansen, M., & Krämer, N. C. (2022) · New Media & Society · doi:10.1177/14614448211072307 · Cited by 46
“Especially retweeting has been associated not only with agreement in a message but also with trust in the author of a tweet (Metaxas et al., 2015).”
BackgroundBridgman, A., Merkley, E., Zhilin, O., Loewen, P. J., Owen, T., & Ruths, D. A. (2021) · Frontiers in Political Science · doi:10.3389/fpos.2021.648646 · Cited by 43
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Butler, L. H., Lamont, P. X., Wan, D. L. Y., Prike, T., Nasim, M., Walker, B., Fay, N., & Ecker, U. K. H. (2023) · Behavior Research Methods · doi:10.3758/s13428-023-02153-x · Cited by 48
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“Retweeting indicates not only interest in a message, but also trust in the message and the originator, and agreement with the message contents (Metaxas et al. 2014; McNeill and Briggs 2014; Metaxas et al. 2015).”
BackgroundR-Map: A Map Metaphor for Visualizing Information Reposting Process in Social Media
Chen, S., Li, S., Chen, S., & Yuan, X. (2019) · IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics · doi:10.1109/tvcg.2019.2934263 · Cited by 39
“Reposting often happens in a follower network [43] and indicates an agreement with the message content [31].”
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Pereira, F. S. F., da Gama, J. M. P., de Amo, S., & Oliveira, G. M. B. (2018) · Machine Learning · doi:10.1007/s10994-018-5740-2 · Cited by 42
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BackgroundRetweeting Behavior Prediction Based on One-Class Collaborative Filtering in Social Networks
Jiang, B., Liang, J., Sha, Y., Li, R., Liu, W., Ma, H., & Wang, L. (2016) · International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR) · doi:10.1145/2911451.2914713 · Cited by 36
“…content freshness and temporal informaion, have been analyzed by [6], the user survey results recently have been indicated that user’s personal preferences and social influence from target user are the two most important factors when users consider whether or not to retweet a given message [1, 4].”
BackgroundHow Politicians Learn from Citizens’ Feedback: The Case of Gender on Twitter
Schoell, N., Gallego, A., & Mens, G. L. (2023) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/ajps.12772 · Cited by 37
Falkenberg, M., Zollo, F., Quattrociocchi, W., Pfeffer, J., & Baronchelli, A. (2024) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-024-53868-0 · Cited by 54
“We focus on retweets since they are generally evidence of a Twitter user endorsing the message of the original poster 63 , as opposed to other Twitterinteractions(mentions,quotesorreplies)whichmay indicatea positive, negative or neutral relationship between the two users.”
Shipping industry's sustainability communications to public in social media: A longitudinal analysis
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Guerra, P., Nalon, R., Assunção, R., & Meira, W. (2017) · Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media · doi:10.1609/icwsm.v11i1.14971 · Cited by 36
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Weber, D., Nasim, M., Falzon, L., & Mitchell, L. (2020) · Lecture notes in computer science · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-61841-4_11 · Cited by 25
Yuan, S., Chen, Y., Vojta, S., & Chen, Y. (2024) · New Media & Society · doi:10.1177/14614448221122202 · Cited by 23
“These words create entertaining effects (Lau et al., 2007) or generate negative arousal emotions such as anger (Berger and Milkman, 2012), which serves as a motivation for individuals to retweet (Metaxas et al., 2015).”
Torregrosa, J., Panizo-Lledot, Á., Bello-Orgaz, G., & Camacho, D. (2020) · Social Network Analysis and Mining · doi:10.1007/s13278-020-00676-1 · Cited by 25
Multipolar social systems: Measuring polarization beyond dichotomous contexts
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Darius, P. (2022) · Social Network Analysis and Mining · doi:10.1007/s13278-022-00958-w · Cited by 22
Sanford, M., Witkowska, M., Gifford, R., & Formanowicz, M. (2023) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1099331 · Cited by 25
“While there are other forms of interaction on Twitter, including liking and replying to a post, retweets are considered the most reliable indicator of influence spread, or diffusion, on the platform (Cha et al., 2010; Kwak et al., 2010; Boyd and Crawford, 2012; Metaxas et al., 2015).”
BackgroundQuote RTs on Twitter: Usage of the New Feature for Political DiscoursePreprint
Garimella, K., Weber, I. G., & Choudhury, M. D. (2016) · arXiv (Cornell University) · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1603.07933 · Cited by 22
“Retweeting almost always signaled endorsement [15].”
BackgroundKeuchenius, A., Törnberg, P., & Uitermark, J. (2021) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0256696 · Cited by 27
Tracking Fringe and Coordinated Activity on Twitter Leading Up to the US Capitol Attack
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Arguing about informant credibility in open multi-agent systems
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Terrorist Attacks, Cultural Incidents, and the Vote for Radical Parties: Analyzing Text from Twitter
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Reveilhac, M., & Morselli, D. (2022) · Swiss Political Science Review · doi:10.1111/spsr.12543 · Cited by 19
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Sainudiin, R., Yogeeswaran, K., Nash, K. A., & Sahioun, R. (2019) · Social Network Analysis and Mining · doi:10.1007/s13278-019-0567-9 · Cited by 17
“, between the tweeter and the retweeter), as they express interest in the message and also endorsement and trust in the communicator (Jansen et al. 2009; Metaxas et al. 2015), especially when retweeted multiple times.”
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“Evidence suggests that sharing others’ messages can be perceived to signal support (Metaxas et al., 2015: 4; Goritz et al., 2020).”
Schuchard, R., & Crooks, A. T. (2021) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0244309 · Cited by 14
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Retweet Prediction Using Social-Aware Probabilistic Matrix Factorization
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“2 Modeling Message Semantic The findings have been indicated that the content of message is an important factor when users retweet message [1, 15].”
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Rao, A., Morstatter, F., Hu, M., Chen, E., Burghardt, K., Ferrara, E., & Lerman, K. (2020) · arXiv (Cornell University) · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2011.08498 · Cited by 15
“The idea behind label propagation is that people prefer to connect to—and retweet content posted by—others who share their opinions (Boyd, Golder, and Lotan 2010; Metaxas et al. 2015).”
BackgroundWeber, D., Falzon, L., Mitchell, L., & Nasim, M. (2022) · Social Network Analysis and Mining · doi:10.1007/s13278-022-00892-x · Cited by 16
“Although retweets are not necessarily direct endorsements, work by Metaxas et al. (2015) and Falzon et al. (2017) found that retweeting is used to indicate trust in the content of a tweet or its source, or to help form social bonds (through reciprocal retweeting), and so retweets can imply…”
BackgroundEngagement with news on Twitter: insights from Australia and Korea
Ackland, R., O’Neil, M., & Park, S. (2018) · Asian Journal of Communication · doi:10.1080/01292986.2018.1462393 · Cited by 14
“It is possible that sharing content could be motivated by disgust, but relevant research (Boyd et al., 2010; Lee, Mahmud, Chen, Zhou, & Nichols, 2015; Metaxas et al., 2015) agrees that interest, trust and agreement with the topic play a central role.”
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“Survey respondents stated that they tended to retweet content they found credible, trustworthy, interesting, agree-able, or entertaining from accounts they believed were cred-ible and trustworthy (Metaxas et al. 2015).”
BackgroundSocial Approval and Network Homophily as Motivators of Online ToxicityPreprint
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Misinformation on Twitter During the Danish National Election: A Case Study
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“counter-examples can be found, the majority of retweets suggest not only interest but also trust in a message (Metaxas et al., 2015).”
BackgroundAnti-vaccine rabbit hole leads to political representation: the case of Twitter in Japan
Toriumi, F., Sakaki, T., Kobayashi, T., & Yoshida, M. (2024) · Journal of Computational Social Science · doi:10.1007/s42001-023-00241-8 · Cited by 11
“First, retweeting a tweet does not necessarily indicate agreement with its content [32, 33], making it difficult to infer anti-vaccine attitudes from retweet behavior.”
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InfluentialPublic Health Messaging on Twitter During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Observational Study
Rao, A., Sabri, N., Guo, S., Raschid, L., & Lerman, K. (2024) · Journal of Medical Internet Research · doi:10.2196/63910 · Cited by 13
“Reposts allow users to repost content originally shared by others, and they have been shown to be proxies of endorsement of content [80,81].”
Polarization of Climate Politics Results from Partisan Sorting: Evidence from Finnish TwitterspherePreprint
Chen, T. H. Y., Salloum, A., Gronow, A., Ylä‐Anttila, T., & Kivelä, M. (2020) · doi:10.31235/osf.io/49qgu · Cited by 10
“While some account have bios indicating that their retweets are not endorsements, prior research showed that the majority of users retweet messages they agree with, find trustworthy, or endorse (Metaxas et al. 2015), and that they tend to retweet others with the same political leaning (Barberá et al.”
BackgroundEstimating community feedback effect on topic choice in social media with predictive modeling
Adelani, D. I., Kobayashi, R., Weber, I. G., & Grabowicz, P. A. (2020) · Publications of the UdS (Saarland University) · doi:10.22028/d291-38109 · Cited by 10
Post diversity: A new lens of social media WOM
Dong, X., Zhang, Z., Zhang, Y., Ao, X., & Tang, T. (2023) · Journal of Business Research · doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.114329 · Cited by 9
Karayianni, C., & Psaltis, C. (2022) · Online Information Review · doi:10.1108/oir-03-2022-0161 · Cited by 8
Pierri, F. (2024) · EPJ Data Science · doi:10.1140/epjds/s13688-024-00501-1 · Cited by 9
“…follower/following information, which could also be employed to estimate the leaning [38], and because retweets usually represent an explicit form of endorsement on Twitter, with only a negligible of accounts (usually journal-ists) including the statement “RT != endorsement” in their profile [39].”
Peng, R. X., & Wang, R. Y. (2023) · Online Information Review · doi:10.1108/oir-03-2022-0186 · Cited by 7
Chueri, J., & Törnberg, P. (2024) · Political Research Exchange · doi:10.1080/2474736x.2023.2299121 · Cited by 8
“In particular for politicians, studies show that retweets can be used as a proxy for endorsements, as politicians strategically employ the affordances of the platform to associate or disassociate themselves with others (Calais Guerra et al. 2011; Metaxas et al. 2015; Wong et al. 2016).”
Understanding the Dynamics between Vaping and Cannabis Legalization Using Twitter Opinions
Adhikari, S., Uppal, A., Mermelstein, R. J., Berger-Wolf, T. Y., & Zheleva, E. (2021) · Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media · doi:10.1609/icwsm.v15i1.18037 · Cited by 7
Retweet Prediction Using Context-Aware Coupled Matrix-Tensor Factorization
Jiang, B., Feng, Y., Wu, J., & Lü, Z. (2019) · Lecture notes in computer science · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-29551-6_17 · Cited by 7
Studying Politicians' Information Sharing on Social Media
Meier, F., & Elsweiler, D. (2019) · Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval · doi:10.1145/3295750.3298944 · Cited by 7
“Not only can a RT indicate agreement with a Tweet’s content, but it can represent an endorsement of or support for the author; a point confirmed by a meta-review of 100+ articles, which also suggests that author endorsement is particularly pronounced when sharing political opinions [21, 33].”
ResultAffective and interactional polarization align across countriesPreprint
Falkenberg, M., Zollo, F., Quattrociocchi, W., Pfeffer, J., & Baronchelli, A. (2023) · PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/ngsb6 · Cited by 14
Tweeting for peace: an analysis of twitter use in Colombia's peace process
Quinchía-Saavedra, C., García, J. A. C., & Pino, J. M. R. (2025) · International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing · doi:10.1007/s12208-025-00433-0 · Cited by 6
“This may be due to the fact that, if a profile retweets a post, this is an indicator that the re-tweeter is politically in agreement with its content (Metaxas et al., 2015).”
Twitter communities are associated with changing user’s opinion towards COVID-19 vaccine in Japan
Wu, Q., Sano, Y., Hideki Takayasu, C., Havlin, S., & Takayasu, M. (2025) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-025-95595-6 · Cited by 9
Characterizing reticulation in online social networks during disasters
Fan, C. H., Shen, J., Mostafavi, A., & Hu, X. (2020) · Applied Network Science · doi:10.1007/s41109-020-00271-5 · Cited by 6
“Although reply and mentions also contribute to network growth on social media in normal situations, as reported in existing studies (Abdullah et al. 2017; Kogan et al. 2015; Metaxas et al. 2015a), we find that the primary activity contributing to network growth in crises situations is sharing.”
BackgroundDijital Çağda Dijital Pandemi: Türkiyede COVID-19 Gündemi
YILDIRIM, A. (2020) · Intermedia International e-journal · doi:10.21645/intermedia.2020.87 · Cited by 6
Elite versus mass polarization on the Brazilian impeachment proceedings of 2016
Moreira, R. C. N., de Melo, P. O. S. V., & Pappa, G. L. (2020) · Social Network Analysis and Mining · doi:10.1007/s13278-020-00706-y · Cited by 8
“Unlike them, our model uses retweet networks, since the retweets act mostly like endorsements of an opinion (Metaxas et al. 2015), which seems to be a more meaningful basis for computing the user’s polarity.”
MethodFriction Interventions to Curb the Spread of Misinformation on Social MediaPreprint
Jahn, L., Rendsvig, R. K., Flammini, A., Menczer, F., & Hendricks, V. F. (2023) · arXiv (Cornell University) · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2307.11498 · Cited by 6
“For example, a high retweet count is likely to be perceived as a crowd-sourced trust signal [8, 21], possibly contributing to the content’s virality [22] irrespective of its quality [23].”
BackgroundRetweeting Twitter Hate Speech After Musk Acquisition
Auten, T., & Matta, J. (2024) · Studies in computational intelligence · doi:10.1007/978-3-031-53503-1_22 · Cited by 5
van Vliet, L., Chueri, J., Törnberg, P., & Uitermark, J. (2023) · Party Politics · doi:10.1177/13540688231158486 · Cited by 5
Don't Feed the Troll: Detecting Troll Behavior via Inverse Reinforcement LearningPreprint
Luceri, L., Giordano, S., & Ferrara, E. (2020) · arXiv (Cornell University) · Cited by 5
An ideological asymmetry in the diffusion of moralized content among political elites
Brady, W. J., Van Bavel, J. J., Jost, J., & Wills, J. A. (2018) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/43n5e · Cited by 5
Luo, K. (2025) · Chaos Solitons & Fractals · doi:10.1016/j.chaos.2025.117581 · Cited by 4
“To isolate the effects of topology and stochastic forcing rather than explicitly modeling these factors, we adopt the unbounded-confidence limit ϕ ( x j , x k ) ≡ 1 as a simplifying assumption.”
Morselli, D., Durrheim, K. L., Beramendi, M., Sepahpour‐Fard, M., Mafunda, M. C., Torres, A. M., Ohamadike, N., Quayle, M., & Schuld, M. (2025) · European Journal of Social Psychology · doi:10.1002/ejsp.70038 · Cited by 5
Svozil, M., Gronow, A., & Ocelík, P. (2025) · Environmental Communication · doi:10.1080/17524032.2025.2456230 · Cited by 6
“…between users with different beliefs (Arlt et al., 2019; Garimella et al., 2018) and retweeting does not only express endorsement (Kobellarz et al., 2022) but is also used to engage in discussion around controversial events and to share information (Majmundar et al., 2018; Metaxas et al., 2021).”
Predicting, evaluating, and explaining top misinformation spreaders via archetypal user behavior
Verdolotti, E., Luceri, L., & Giordano, S. (2025) · Online Social Networks and Media · doi:10.1016/j.osnem.2025.100336 · Cited by 5
“Among these, we focus specifically on re-shares, as they provide a more direct signal of content endorsement and dissemination [53].”
In-party love spreads more efficiently than out-party hate in online communities
Martín-Gutíerrez, S., Robles, J. M., Torcal, M., Losada, J. C., & Benito, R. M. (2024) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-024-65688-9 · Cited by 9
Nip, J. Y. M., & Cheng, Y. (2022) · Journalism and Media · doi:10.3390/journalmedia3030039 · Cited by 4
The Unintended Consequences of Amplifying the Radical Right on Twitter
Fernandes, J. M., & Won, M. (2023) · Political Communication · doi:10.1080/10584609.2023.2232752 · Cited by 7
“There is an extensive literature about the meaning of retweeting (Boyd et al., 2010; Metaxas et al., 2015).”
BackgroundLi, K., Lv, G., Wang, Z., Liu, Q., Chen, E., & Qiao, L. (2018) · Frontiers of Computer Science · doi:10.1007/s11704-018-7453-x · Cited by 4
Thomas, R., McDowell-Naylor, D., & Cushion, S. (2022) · Journalism Practice · doi:10.1080/17512786.2022.2050469 · Cited by 4
“On the basis that Retweeting indicates interest, trust and agreement (Metaxas et al. 2015), we analysed Retweet rates across our 4-year sample.”
MethodWhen Groups Fall Apart: Identifying Transnational Polarization with Twitter from the Arab UprisingsPreprint
Kubinec, R., & Owen, J. M. (2018) · SocArXiv (OSF Preprints) · doi:10.31235/osf.io/wykmj · Cited by 4
Friction Against Fiction: Adding 'Grit' to Boost Psychological Inoculation Against MisinformationPreprint
Fendt, M., Holford, D. L., & Lewandowsky, S. (2024) · PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/dzbm7 · Cited by 4
Wang, Z., Lu, Y., Zhou, Y., & Ji, J. (2024) · Journal of Informetrics · doi:10.1016/j.joi.2024.101562 · Cited by 3
A perspective on friction interventions to curb the spread of misinformation
Jahn, L., Rendsvig, R. K., Flammini, A., Menczer, F., & Hendricks, V. F. (2025) · npj Complexity · doi:10.1038/s44260-025-00051-1 · Cited by 19
“Forexample,ahighretweetcountislikelytobeperceivedasa crowd-sourcedtrustsignal 8,21 , possibly contributing to the content ’ s virality 22 irrespective of quality 23 .”
Arora, M., Kim, H. J., Masuoka, N., & Stout, C. T. (2024) · Political Communication · doi:10.1080/10584609.2024.2377977 · Cited by 3
“…retweets most often indicate a user’s positive response to a post and individuals usually retweet information from users they agree with (see Mousavi and Gu, 2015), it might be the case that some users, such as journalists (see Metaxas et al., 2021), retweet a post because they oppose the content.”
When Groups Fall Apart: Identifying Transnational Polarization During the Arab Uprisings
Kubinec, R., & Owen, J. M. (2021) · Political Analysis · doi:10.1017/pan.2020.46 · Cited by 3
“2015;HalberstamandKnight 2016) and surveysof Twitter users (Metaxas et al. 2015).”
Sharing Photos on Social Media: Visual Attention Affects Real-World Decision Making
Fagan, S. E., Wade, L., Hugenberg, K., Kapadia, A. C., & Bertenthal, B. I. (2021) · Lecture notes in networks and systems · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-79997-7_25 · Cited by 3
Metadata
- Authors
- Metaxas, P., Mustafaraj, E., Wong, K., Zeng, L., O'Keefe, M., & Finn, S.
- Affiliations
- Wellesley College (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
- Published
- 2021-08-03
- Volume
- 9
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 658-661
- ISSN
- 2162-3449 (ISSN-L)
- 2334-0770
- OpenAlex
- W2399902206
- Cited by
- 162
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 15
- FWCI
- 28.38
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (publishedVersion)
- AAAI Publications (The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (1117693)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Complex Network Analysis Techniques
- Social Sciences › Communication › Media and Digital Communication
- Keywords
- retweets, Twitter, user motivation, hashtags, political hashtags, journalists, user profiles
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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