Propaganda and Misinformation on Facebook and Twitter during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Abstract

Online social media represent an oftentimes unique source of information, and having access to reliable and unbiased content is crucial, especially during crises and contentious events. We study the spread of propaganda and misinformation that circulated on Facebook and Twitter during the first few months of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. By leveraging two large datasets of millions of social media posts, we estimate the prevalence of Russian propaganda and low-credibility content on the two platforms, describing temporal patterns and highlighting the disproportionate role played by superspreaders in amplifying unreliable content. We infer the political leaning of Facebook pages and Twitter users sharing propaganda and misinformation, and observe they tend to be more right-leaning than the average. By estimating the amount of content moderated by the two platforms, we show that only about 8-15% of the posts and tweets sharing links to Russian propaganda or untrustworthy sources were removed. Overall, our findings show that Facebook and Twitter are still vulnerable to abuse, especially during crises: we highlight the need to urgently address this issue to preserve the integrity of online conversations.

Accepted at WebSci'2023

References in corpus (4)

• #IStandWithPutin versus #IStandWithUkraine: The interaction of bots and humans in discussion of the Russia/Ukraine war
• How does Twitter account moderation work? Dynamics of account creation and suspension on Twitter during major geopolitical events
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• The Russian invasion of Ukraine selectively depolarized the Finnish NATO discussion
• Retrieving false claims on Twitter during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
• Exposing Cross-Platform Coordinated Inauthentic Activity in the Run-Up to the 2024 U.S. Election
• A Multi-Platform Collection of Social Media Posts about the 2022 U.S. Midterm Elections
• Susceptibility to Unreliable Information Sources: Swift Adoption with Minimal Exposure
• The influence of coordinated behavior on toxicity
• Wikipedia in Wartime: Experiences of Wikipedians Maintaining Articles About the Russia-Ukraine War