So, the wonderful #SMSociety conference has started in an online format, and my @qutdmrc colleague @Tobias_Keller and I have a paper on its YouTube channel that investigates whether ' #fakenews' really travels faster than 'real news'. (Spoiler: no.)

We examine the average Twitter dissemination curves for articles from four Australian mainstream and ten global fringe news outlets during 2019, and it turns out that news from ABC News disseminates almost exactly as quickly as news from Breitbart, for example. #SMSociety

Differences between sites appear driven more by site type and specialisation: for instance, specialist sites such as The Conversation (scholarly articles) and Judicial Watch (hyperpartisan lawfare) disseminate more slowly than generalist news sites. #SMSociety

Some fringe news sites do get an early jump - they're quicker to 10% and even 25% of their total dissemination, on average, but that may be a sign of a greater focus on breaking news topics rather than a systemic difference. By the 50% mark, mainstream news catch up. #SMSociety

I've posted the video and slides on my blog as well, along with our earlier work-in-progress paper that outlines our methodology. And of course we plan to extend this research by including a greater number of news sites for comparison. #SMSociety

http://snurb.info/node/2602