Misinformation Outpaces Mainstream News on Israel-Hamas War

  Midjourney

Influential but unreliable social media accounts, including those promoted by Elon Musk, are leading the narrative around the Israel-Hamas conflict, surpassing established news outlets, according to a study published by the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public.

The Speed and Disorientation of News on Social Media

The study analyzed viral posts during a three-day period from the onset of the attack against Israel on October 7. It found that the most popular posts revealed how the news on social media platforms is quicker, more disorienting, and potentially more influenced by Musk himself. This finding supports a growing body of anecdotal evidence from researchers, academics, and journalists who have noted a deterioration in how news and information is disseminated and incentivized on Twitter over the past year, particularly since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas crisis.

Verified Accounts Spreading Misinformation

Separately, NewsGuard, a nonpartisan company that monitors false narratives online, found that verified accounts were behind almost three-quarters of the most viral misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war on Twitter.

Mike Caulfield, a research scientist at the University of Washington and the lead author of the report, stated that this shift is a real phenomenon. He added, “It’s fast, it’s unvetted, and it’s very often unsourced. And there’s every indication that the shift is not accidental and that it’s part of a vision of what news is going to be on social media.”

The Rise of ‘New Elites’

The researchers identified seven high-performing social media accounts as ‘new elites’, due to their disproportionate power and influence over the Israel-Hamas news. These include Visegrád 24, Mario Nawfal, \@spectatorindex, \@CollinRugg, and \@CensoredMen.

Despite having fewer followers, Tweets about the Israel-Hamas war from these accounts outperformed popular news accounts belonging to CNN, The New York Times, the BBC, and Reuters. Across the research period, tweets about the Israel-Hamas war from well-followed traditional news sources got 112 million views over 298 tweets, while tweets from the seven ‘new elites’ drew 1.6 billion views across 1,834 tweets.