Inference of User Desires to Spread Disinformation Based on Social Situation Analytics and Group Effect

The dissemination of digital disinformation in online social networks (OSNs) has been the subject of extensive research, although many challenges remain, including the analysis and control of disinformation dissemination across different platforms (i.e., cross-platform). In this article, we investigate and analyze the spreading patterns and regularities of disinformation both within a single platform and across platforms. To explore the complex relationship between user propagation desire and behaviour within the same group, a user propagation desire inference model based on propagation characteristics (behaviour characteristics and time characteristics) and a bidirectional backpropagation (B-BP) deep neural network are constructed. Then, to avoid overfitting due to the interaction of users' propagation behaviour and the correlation among propagation characteristics, a novel adaptive weighted particle swarm optimization evolutionary algorithm is utilized to further optimize the B-BP deep neural network. We design and conduct a series of evaluation experiments on the current global hot topics including but not limited to novel coronavirus-19 pandemic (COVID-19), food safety, medical and health, and environmental protection. By using a real-world social platform and its social situation metadata analysis, the experimental results show that the proposed method not only accurately predicts the level of user propagation desire under multiple behaviour interactions but also facilitates social platform managers in handling disinformation disseminators. Our findings reveal that the intensity of social users' desires to spread disinformation is related to the topics and groups that users are interested in, while the propagation motivation of social users is not strong under topics that users are not interested in. Our studies also demonstrate that social users with propagation desires tend to utilize their familiar social platforms and local circles for communication, and the behaviour and desire to spread disinformation to the cross-platform are not strong. We posit that these findings can help inform online and, fine-grained governance and mitigation strategies other than one size fits all approaches (e.g., account prohibition and deletion), and hopefully minimize disinformation dissemination.

Automated summary

This article investigates the spreading patterns and regularities of disinformation within and across platforms, and proposes a user propagation desire inference model and an optimization algorithm based on deep neural networks. Experimental results demonstrate that users' desire to spread disinformation is related to their interests and topics, and cross-platform dissemination motivation is weak. These findings can inform fine-grained governance and mitigation strategies to minimize disinformation dissemination.