Platform Effects on Alternative Influencer Content: Understanding How Audiences and Channels Shape Misinformation Online

Abstract

People are increasingly exposed to science and political information from social media. One consequence is that these sites play host to “alternative influencers,” who spread misinformation. However, content posted by alternative influencers on different social media platforms is unlikely to be homogenous. Our study uses computational methods to investigate how dimensions we refer to as audience and channel of social media platforms influence emotion and topics in content posted by “alternative influencers” on different platforms. Using COVID-19 as an example, we find that alternative influencers’ content contained more anger and fear words on Facebook and Twitter compared to YouTube. We also found that these actors discussed substantively different topics in their COVID-19 content on YouTube compared to Twitter and Facebook. With these findings, we discuss how the audience and channel of different social media platforms affect alternative influencers’ ability to spread misinformation online.