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posted by fyngyrz on Tuesday April 03 2018, @05:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the horde-it-on-the-grapevine dept.

Due to the Internet, conspiracy theories are on the rise and playing an increasingly significant role in global politics. Now new research from The Australian National University (ANU) has analysed digital data to reveal exactly who is propagating them and why.

Lead researcher Dr Colin Klein of the ANU School of Philosophy said that conspiracies such as Pizzagate (which falsely claimed high-ranking Democratic Party officials were running a child-sex ring out of a pizza shop) and the anti-vaccination movement are becoming a bigger issue.

Dr Klein and his team used a huge, publicly available dataset of every comment made on the conspiracy section of the world's largest discussion website Reddit from 2007 to mid-2015 to work out exactly who was taking part in spreading these conspiracies and why. He was surprised by the results.

The analysis showed that most conspiracies built traction when a range of different people and groups could connect it to their own preconceived beliefs or agendas.

http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu-study-reveals-who-is-spreading-online-conspiracies

[Also Covered By]: Phys.org

[Paper]: Topic Modeling Reveals Distinct Interests within an Online Conspiracy Forum

Does Reddit seem like a good choice for this study?


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  • (Score: 2) by Snow on Wednesday April 04 2018, @02:44PM (1 child)

    by Snow (1601) on Wednesday April 04 2018, @02:44PM (#662500) Journal

    For the most part, I agree. Nothing happens on reddit. However, for bitcoin, reddit is (by far) the major meeting place to discuss bitcoin and ideas. All of the developers have reddit accounts and are active on reddit. It actually is where decisions are made. You should check it out. It's very interesting to watch it happen in front of your eyes:

    https://reddit.com/r/btc [reddit.com]

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  • (Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Saturday April 07 2018, @03:24AM

    by fakefuck39 (6620) on Saturday April 07 2018, @03:24AM (#663640)

    I see. I'm going to guess you also think google is in charge of bitcoin because developers have a gmail account. day traders of oil futures also have reddit accounts, so reddit influences the oil prices. let me know when you actually invest in bitcoin, hundreds of thousands of dollars of USD that you buy it for (like me). Otherwise, sorry - your opinion doesn't count since you're not educated on or involved in the topic at hand. You're some idiot doing PC Support who reads a lot of random crap and states his useless opinion as fact. M'a douche to you dipshit.