Exploring the Dynamics of Justification in the Wake of a Rumor Outbreak on Social Media

What is it about?

This paper explores the dynamics of justification in the wake of a rumor outbreak on social media. Specifically, it examines the extent to which the five types of justification—descriptive argumentation, presumptive argumentation, evidentialism, truth skepticism, and epistemological skepticism—manifested in different voices including pro-rumor, anti-rumor and doubts before and after fact-checking.

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Photo by Jorge Franganillo on Unsplash

Photo by Jorge Franganillo on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Contrary to the literature that suggests the online community’s susceptibility to hoaxes, the paper offers a silver lining: Users are responsible enough to correct rumors during the later phase of a rumor lifecycle. This sense of public-spiritedness needs to be harnessed for crowdsourced rumor refutation.