It is a known fact that news, be it real or fake, spreads like wildfire on social media. Social media sites amplify misinformation and conspiracy theories. To address this concern, an interdisciplinary team of computer scientists, physicists and social scientists led by the University of South Florida (USF) has found a solution to ensure social media users are exposed to more reliable news sources.

In their study published in the journal ‘Nature Human Behaviour’, the researchers focused on the recommendation algorithm that is used by social media platforms to prioritize content displayed to users.

Rather than measuring engagement based on the number of users and pageviews, the researchers looked at what content gets amplified on a newsfeed, focusing on a news source’s reliability score and the political diversity of their audience.

“Low-quality content is engaging because it conforms to what we already know and like, regardless of whether it is accurate or not,” said Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia, assistant professor of computer science and engineering at USF. “As a result, misinformation and conspiracy theories often go viral within like-minded audiences. The algorithm ends up picking the wrong signal and keeps promoting it further. To break this cycle, one should look for content that is engaging, but for a diverse audience, not for a like-minded one.”