BARABÁSILAB: HIDDEN PATTERNS

FAKE NEWS (2018)
BARABÁSILAB: HIDDEN PATTERNS HIDDEN PATTERNS CHOOSE VIEW ENTRANCE ENTRANCE - 2. view NATURE 150 (2019) NATURE 150 (2019) - 2. view NATURE 150 (2019) - 3. view FLAVOR NETWORK (2011) FLAVOR NETWORK (2011) - 2. view MOBILITY AND PANDEMIC (2008/2020) MOBILITY AND PANDEMIC (2008/2020) - 2. view CONTROL (2011) CONTROL (2011) - 2. view DISEASOME (2007) DISEASOME (2007) - 2. view INTERACTOME (2012) INTERACTOME (2012) - 2. view CONNECTOME (2019) CONNECTOME (2019) - 2. view HOT NETWORKS (2019) SKETCHES (2018) LIBRARY LIBRARY - 2. view VIRUSES (2009/2020) FAKE NEWS (2018) ART NETWORK (2018/2020) ART NETWORK (2018/2020) - 2. view ART NETWORK (2018/2020) - 3. view COSMIC WEB (2016) COSMIC WEB (2016) - 2. view IMPRESSUM

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FAKE NEWS (2018)

Graph I.

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FAKE NEWS (2018)

The spread of fake news

The spread of fake news is empowered by social media. One person posts a bogus story alleging that several high-ranking Democratic Party officials are running a sex-trafficking ring in the basement of a Washington, DC pizza parlor on a Twitter, and suddenly everybody knows about it. The BarabásiLab chose to map the spread of the Pizzagate scandal because it was the first well-documented fake news event—the debunked conspiracy theory was traced to conspiracy website Infowars—that affected the 2016 US election landscape.

The Fake News network depicts the spread of tweets sharing the #pizzagate hashtag on Twitter. By 2016, a substantial amount of activity on Twitter was generated by bots, program-driven accounts that pose as humans. To show the important role such bots play in the propagation of fake news, the team evaluated each Twitter account that retweeted #pizzagate using a Botometer, an artificial intelligence tool that separates humans from bots. The number of bot tweets versus human tweets in spreading Pizzagate are represented on the map by node color—the bots are shown in ocher-colored nodes, the humans in teal.

The Fake News Network was conceived as a data sculpture and created as part of the WonderNet project (netwonder.net), the first public release of several data sculptures. At the time, however, the 3D-printing technology lacked the resolution to sufficiently articulate the structure’s fine details. Instead, map was produced in three other mediums, first as a 2D monochromatic print, second as a laser-engraved glass etching, a medium used by the BarabásiLab to represent 3D networks with exceptional complexity, and finally as a video shown on the screen.