Psychology
How Misinformation Spreads in Crisis Situations
Quick fact
Analysis by MIT researchers of Twitter data found that false news stories were 70% more likely to be retweeted than true ones, and genuine stories took six times as long to reach 1,500 people as falsehoods.
Why this is interesting
When a crisis breaks—an earthquake, a public-health emergency, a mass shooting—why do false rumors spread so much faster than the truth?