THE "HOAX" RUNS ON THE WEB: HOW A FALSE FOOD MYTH IS BORN AND WHY IT IS DANGEROUS

The web has always been considered the place par excellence where freedom of speech and sharing find ample space, supported by the passionate contribution of users. It is the symbolic space par excellence for the exchange of content, news or opinions, which users convey and exchange in real time, with a simple click. If on the one hand the richness of content is therefore appreciable, on the other hand the latter risks going to the detriment of the quality of the information provided. How many, in fact, really question the truthfulness of the news we read daily on the web? Although for many it is a secondary or relatively serious problem when it comes to gossip or current affairs, the situation changes when it comes to matters related to health and proper nutrition. In fact, awareness and sensitivity to the "hoax" phenomenon is growing - a term created to indicate a false or unlikely statement - especially when it comes to nutrition.

To clarify and learn more, we have decided to investigate the causes and origins of false food myths on the web.

The easy generalization

A first food for thought comes from David Lazer, an expert teacher in Computational Social Science, according to which the democratic nature of information would favor the emergence of false myths. The presence of a multiform vastness of freely produced contents would facilitate the construction of numerous food legends. As happens in the oral story, where in the exchange of information there is a tendency to generalize and simplify, a false myth would arise from the generalist and not very precise description of the user on the network; according to Lazer it would be the absence of proper scientific preparation to give birth to a "hoax".

The buffaloes? They are contagious

Furthermore, the viral diffusion of information, favored by the very nature of the network, would contribute to explaining the reasons for the false food myths. As the scholar Alessandro Vespignani pointed out in this regard, "Information is a virus, a phenomenon of social contagion", which propagates at great speed following complex trajectories and dynamics that need to be "predicted and analyzed" with care.

The saying "He who looks alike takes himself" also applies to buffaloes

But the most illuminating explanation of the origin of the buffaloes is the one proposed by Walter Quattrociocchi, coordinator of the Laboratory of Computational Social Science of the IMT of Lucca. According to the well-known computer scientist, the social phenomena of homophilia and polarization, which favor interaction between similar categories of users, would contribute to facilitating the spread of false myths. Following the reasoning, the more a hoax is shared by people we know, the more the possibility of being infected by it increases. And who among the users is most likely to mistake the hoax for a real fact? The researcher has no doubts: they are fans of counter-information pages, that is, news that is difficult to verify. Once conveyed, the hoax is spread online by very polarized users, that is, by those who have an average of about 80% likes on information sources that are difficult to control. To expose the communicators, the game is simple; it is enough to find one and at that point we will have identified the others as well; as Dr. Quattrociocchi reveals, this happens "Because thanks to homophilia, we can accurately identify the network of friendships of each of them".

Digital fake

They are rampant on the web by leveraging the curiosity and interest of users, but they are "fake", in fact, fake ones. With this term we can designate different realities, from a fake profile on Facebook, to a photomontage or indeed a false news, all the more difficult to unmask the more similar to reality. To date, there is no antidote to the "hoax", however the assumption of a critical spirit is a good starting point: consciously evaluating virtual contents, comparing multiple sources, actively training the critical sense, in fact, can be a great way to begin to fathom the false food myths and clarify the web! Seeing is believing…

In collaboration with Merenditeitaliane.it