Abstract for: Dynamic Analysis of False Information Spread Over Social Media: 5G-COVID 19 Conspiracy Theory

The spread of false information via online social networks is a critical societal issue with various potential harms. Although there are huge efforts both in research and application to mitigate this problem, it persists with increasing magnitude of results ranging from political manipulation to violent attacks. In our research, we built a causal simulation model to combine the existing accumulated knowledge in the literature and provide a formal model to evaluate the governing dynamics for the specific case of the viral spread of the 5G-COVID-19 conspiracy theory. The model makes use of both qualitative and quantitative data and successfully generates the observed dynamics for the 5g narrative. Preliminary results suggest that the dominance of believers in the active discussion on social media is overrepresented relative to the total population. As further research, we plan to expand our analysis on the base model by inclusion of other user profiles, experiment with different mitigation strategies, and discuss the potential similarities and differences of our case with other types of false information dynamics.