The Spread of Disinformation on the Web: An Examination of Memes on Social Networking

Social media has become a potent vector for political disinformation and propaganda, often spread by malicious actors such as trolls or even foreign intelligence services, as famously occurred during the 2016 United States election. However, what makes social media a particularly potent vector for disinformation is not so much the behavior of malicious actors themselves, but rather, ordinary users, who play a vital role in spreading and magnifying this disinformation. In order to understand and combat the spread of disinformation, we conduct two surveys examining the patterns of user behavior in sharing different types of disinformation. The first survey classifies a variety of image memes based on user reaction and interpretation. The second survey will be evaluating user behavior toward those memes with additional measures in place to assess the personality and trait affect of users. The goal is to help understand how ordinary social media users behave in regards to political propaganda and disinformation.