We address the diffusion of information about the COVID-19 with a massive data analysis on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit and Gab. We analyze engagement and interest in the COVID-19 topic and provide a differential assessment on the evolution of the discourse on a global scale for each platform and their users. We fit information spreading with epidemic models characterizing the basic reproduction number [Formula: see text] for each social media platform. Moreover, we identify information spreading from questionable sources, finding different volumes of misinformation in each platform. However, information from both reliable and questionable sources do not present different spreading patterns. Finally, we provide platform-dependent numerical estimates of rumors' amplification.

/pdf/the-covid-19-social-media-infodemic-7p7dgg6vb1.pdf

The COVID-19 social media infodemic

/pdf/educational-attainment-in-the-united-states-march-1977-and-1j0zlytaod.pdf

Educational Attainment in the United States: March 1977 and 1976. Current Population Reports, Population Characteristics, Series P-20, No. 314.

Social media allows people to freely interact with others and offers multiple ways for marketers to reach and engage with consumers. Considering the numerous ways social media affects individuals and businesses alike, in this article, the authors focus on where they believe the future of social media lies when considering marketing-related topics and issues. Drawing on academic research, discussions with industry leaders, and popular discourse, the authors identify nine themes, organized by predicted imminence (i.e., the immediate, near, and far futures), that they believe will meaningfully shape the future of social media through three lenses: consumer, industry, and public policy. Within each theme, the authors describe the digital landscape, present and discuss their predictions, and identify relevant future research directions for academics and practitioners.

/pdf/the-future-of-social-media-in-marketing-3imc734fnb.pdf

The future of social media in marketing.

Some previous histories of southern education, such as Charles W. Dabney's
classic Universal Education in the South, slighted the role of American
Americans in shaping their own education. James Anderson's new book, the
best single volume on black education in the post-bellum south, commits the
opposite error. Anderson exaggerates the power and autonomy of southern
ex-slaves during Reconstruction and of southern blacks in general during the
Jim Crow era, and correspondingly underemphasizes the significance for their
education of the efforts of former free people of colour, northern blacks and
whites and white southerners. While meriting praise for its uncovering of the
role of ordinary people struggling to improve their educational lot, Anderson's
revisionist book almost wholly excludes electoral, legislative and administrative
politics. The exclusions and lopsided emphases make it nearly as one-sided
and incomplete as the white-centred, bureaucrat-dominated history that
it seeks to replace.

The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 [Book Review]

Distrust in scientific expertise1–14 is dangerous. Opposition to vaccination with a future vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the causal agent of COVID-19, for example, could amplify outbreaks2–4, as happened for measles in 20195,6. Homemade remedies7,8 and falsehoods are being shared widely on the Internet, as well as dismissals of expert advice9–11. There is a lack of understanding about how this distrust evolves at the system level13,14. Here we provide a map of the contention surrounding vaccines that has emerged from the global pool of around three billion Facebook users. Its core reveals a multi-sided landscape of unprecedented intricacy that involves nearly 100 million individuals partitioned into highly dynamic, interconnected clusters across cities, countries, continents and languages. Although smaller in overall size, anti-vaccination clusters manage to become highly entangled with undecided clusters in the main online network, whereas pro-vaccination clusters are more peripheral. Our theoretical framework reproduces the recent explosive growth in anti-vaccination views, and predicts that these views will dominate in a decade. Insights provided by this framework can inform new policies and approaches to interrupt this shift to negative views. Our results challenge the conventional thinking about undecided individuals in issues of contention surrounding health, shed light on other issues of contention such as climate change11, and highlight the key role of network cluster dynamics in multi-species ecologies15. Insights into the interactions between pro- and anti-vaccination clusters on Facebook can enable policies and approaches that attempt to interrupt the shift to anti-vaccination views and persuade undecided individuals to adopt a pro-vaccination stance.

/pdf/the-online-competition-between-pro-and-anti-vaccination-50fvl99vj2.pdf

The online competition between pro- and anti-vaccination views.

There is mounting concern that social media sites contribute to political polarization by creating “echo chambers” that insulate people from opposing views about current events. We surveyed a large sample of Democrats and Republicans who visit Twitter at least three times each week about a range of social policy issues. One week later, we randomly assigned respondents to a treatment condition in which they were offered financial incentives to follow a Twitter bot for 1 month that exposed them to messages from those with opposing political ideologies (e.g., elected officials, opinion leaders, media organizations, and nonprofit groups). Respondents were resurveyed at the end of the month to measure the effect of this treatment, and at regular intervals throughout the study period to monitor treatment compliance. We find that Republicans who followed a liberal Twitter bot became substantially more conservative posttreatment. Democrats exhibited slight increases in liberal attitudes after following a conservative Twitter bot, although these effects are not statistically significant. Notwithstanding important limitations of our study, these findings have significant implications for the interdisciplinary literature on political polarization and the emerging field of computational social science.

Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization

Classic and contemporary studies show that greater social class status is associated with higher levels of education for youth. However, racialized processes might constrain the benefits blacks rec...

Social Class and Educational Attainment: Do Blacks Benefit Less from Increases in Parents’ Social Class Status?:

There is mounting concern that social media sites contribute to political polarization by creating "echo chambers" that insulate people from opposing views about current events. We surveyed a large sample of Democrats and Republicans who visit Twitter at least three times each week about a range of social policy issues. One week later, we randomly assigned respondents to a treatment condition in which they were offered financial incentives to follow a Twitter bot for one month that exposed them to messages produced by elected officials, organizations, and other opinion leaders with opposing political ideologies. Respondents were re-surveyed at the end of the month to measure the effect of this treatment, and at regular intervals throughout the study period to monitor treatment compliance. We find that Republicans who followed a liberal Twitter bot became substantially more conservative post-treatment, and Democrats who followed a conservative Twitter bot became slightly more liberal post-treatment. These findings have important implications for the interdisciplinary literature on political polarization as well as the emerging field of computational social science.

John P. Bumpus

Papers

Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization

Social Class and Educational Attainment: Do Blacks Benefit Less from Increases in Parents’ Social Class Status?:

Exposure to Opposing Views can Increase Political Polarization: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment on Social Media

The impact of suspension on participation in school-based extracurricular activities and out-of-school community service.