Social media misinformation theory draws on classic tragedies, platform algorithms

PHYS.org/Colorado State University
Tales of people reading on social media about suspect, off-label uses of ivermectin to ward off COVID-19, ingesting the livestock dewormer and then suffering gastrointestinal distress might seem like the pinnacle of the 2021 zeitgeist. According to a new theory by two College of Business computer information systems faculty, it's actually a tale as old as storytelling itself.

Drawing on literature's roots in Greek and Shakespearean tragedy and philosophical explorations of the nature of truth, Nick Roberts and Hamed Qahri-Saremi advance a theory that looks to explain how misinformation on social media platforms can lead people to take real-world actions with disastrous consequences. In Tragedy, Truth, and Technology: The 3T Theory of Social Media-Driven Misinformation, the pair maps how social media users struggle to evaluate claims. Drawing parallels to Shakespeare's Othello and Greek tragic tradition, they illustrate how social media algorithms are performing similar roles to those that villains take in literary tragedy. MORE