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Viral misinformation and echo Viral

misinformation
chambers: the diffusion of rumors and echo
chambers
about genetically modified
organisms on social media
Xiaohui Wang and Yunya Song Received 19 January 2020
Revised 31 March 2020
Department of Journalism, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon, Hong Kong 14 May 2020
Accepted 14 May 2020

Abstract
Purpose – The spread of rumors on social media has caused increasing concerns about an under-informed or
even misinformed public when it comes to scientific issues. However, researchers have rarely investigated their
diffusion in non-western contexts. This study aims to systematically examine the content and network
structure of rumor-related discussions around genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on Chinese social media.
Design/methodology/approach – This study identified 21,837 rumor-related posts of GMOs on Weibo, one
of China’s most popular social media platforms. An approach combining social network analysis and content
analysis was employed to classify user attitudes toward rumors, measure the level of homophily of their
attitudes and examine the nature of their interactions.
Findings – Though a certain level of homophily existed in the interaction networks, referring to the observed
echo chamber effect, Weibo also served as a public forum for GMO discussions in which cross-cutting ties
between communities existed. A considerable amount of interactions emerged between the pro- and anti-GMO
camps, and most of them involved providing or requesting information, which could mitigate the likelihood of
opinion polarization. Moreover, this study revealed the declining role of traditional opinion leaders and pointed
toward the need for alternative strategies for efficient fact-checking.
Originality/value – In general, the findings of this study suggested that microblogging platforms such as Weibo
can function as public forums for discussing GMOs that expose users to ideologically cross-cutting viewpoints.
This study stands to provide important insights into the viral processes of scientific rumors on social media.
Keywords Rumor, Genetically modified organism, Echo chamber, Chinese social media, Comments
Paper type Research paper

The spread of rumors about scientific topics has posed a persistent threat amid the rise of
social media (De Domenico et al., 2013). As people increasingly rely upon social media for
science information to inform their decisions, the rapid propagation of rumors across social
networking sites have considerably increased the chances of citizens to be misinformed about
science (Bessi et al., 2015). Although researchers have often investigated the diffusion of
scientific rumors in the US and European settings, very few have examined its diffusion in
non-western contexts. Such research is necessary, however, not only because rumors are
diffused and assessed within communities in distinct cultural contexts, but also because
information and its judgment are socially located and not merely the result of individual
decisions (Fine, 2007). Researchers to date have focused on the characteristics of audiences
and their critical ability to assess rumors and tend to downplay how communal judgments
shape individual responses within particular cultural contexts. To narrow those gaps in the
literature, we set out to examine, from a social network perspective, how scientific rumors
spread on Chinese social media, namely, on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. In
particular, we scrutinized how social media users responded to rumors – disseminated them,

This work is supported in part by the Start-up Grant Tier 2 (RC-SGT2/18-19/COMM/001), the Initiation Internet Research
Grant (RC-FNRA-IG-18-19-04), the Interdisciplinary Research Clusters Matching Scheme (IRCMS/19-20/ © Emerald Publishing Limited
1066-2243
D04) and the AI and Media Research Lab (SDF17-1013-P01) at Hong Kong Baptist University. DOI 10.1108/INTR-11-2019-0491
INTR supported them, or denied them – about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) spread in
discussions about GMOs on Weibo.
Despite being recognized for its tight control over China, the Chinese government has
granted its citizens great latitude when it comes to GMOs. As a result, Chinese social media
networks are rife with fake news and anti-GMO fervor, spread by a wide range of sources,
including celebrities, Maoists and nongovernmental organizations (Chow, 2019). More
recently, as part of a concerted effort to combat skepticism and hostility toward GMO foods,
Chinese scientists have begun turning to social media such as Weibo to discuss GMOs. As
China’s most popular microblogging platform, Weibo has become widely known as a
platform on which laypeople as well as experts, media professionals and paid communicators
debate and deliberate upon GMOs (Xu et al., 2018).
Studies on the consumption of science misinformation in western contexts (e.g. Bessi et al.,
2014) have suggested that in environments where misinformation is pervasive, users’
aggregation around shared beliefs may make sustained exposure to misleading information a
determinant of its virality. Social media users tend to gravitate toward information that
validates their belief systems and to form echo chambers – homophilous communities of the
like-minded – that reinforce a shared narrative (Colleoni et al., 2014). Existing literature has
shown that homophilous communities in online social networks influence opinions about and
reactions to many issues of public concern, including political disclosure (Shin et al., 2017),
vaccination (Schmidt et al., 2018), traditional Chinese medicine (Chen et al., 2018) and climate
change (Williams et al., 2015). In contribution, we sought to identify whether such echo
chamber effects exist in users’ responses to GMO-related rumors on Chinese social media.
Above all, our main research objective was to examine the echo chamber effect in the
diffusion of GMO-related rumors. This could be achieved through an improved
understanding of the community structure of the rumor diffusion network and the nature
of users’ interactions between and within communities. Using an approach combining social
network analysis, manual content analysis and automatic text analytics, we mapped the
structure of Weibo users’ interaction networks, measured the distribution of their attitudes in
those networks and examined the content and nature of their interactions. Our aim was to
characterize the relationship between the virality of scientific rumors and users’ patterns of
information consumption on social media. The results of our work stand to provide important
insights into the viral processes of scientific rumors on social media.

The controversy over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in China

Chinese consumers have long relied on traditional media – TV, newspapers and radios – as
major sources of information about GMOs (He et al., 2015; Ho et al., 2006), the government-
controlled coverage of which has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic and rarely critical (Liu
and Cong, 2014). In a study on two state-owned newspapers from 2002–2011, Du and Rachul
(2012) suggested that Chinese reports on genetically modified (GM) crops had emphasized the
benefits of transgenic organisms and seldom portrayed GM crops in a negative light.
However, given the rising amount of information available online, scandals about poisoned
food have unsurprisingly abounded on social media, and implausible-sounding claims from a
vocal minority of GMO critics have gained traction within China’s social media networks
(Cao, 2018). Indicating the influence of such (mis)information, 46.7% of the respondents in a
recent China-wide survey espoused negative views on GMOs, but most of their doubts about
the safety of GM foods were based on false information (Cui and Shoemaker, 2018).
Much of the controversy surrounding GM foods in China concerns their possible risks to
human health, and research has shown that mistrust in governmental regulation and a lack of
scientific knowledge have exacerbated negative public perceptions of GMOs (Gaskell et al.,
1999). The survey results show that consumers were not only largely unfamiliar with GM
technologies and their potential benefits but also skeptical of scientists and the government Viral
when it comes to GMOs (Cui and Shoemaker, 2018). Although China initially pursued relatively misinformation
aggressive policies for the development of biotechnology and the government’s enthusiasm for
GM technology has not waned, Chinese authorities have so far failed to weigh in on the very
and echo
public debate over such technology’s safety (Ji et al., 2019). The chasm of credibility and lack of chambers
any trusted referee make it nearly impossible for the public to distinguish rumor from fact, and
the public’s ignorance about scientific knowledge in the first place has contributed to the
virality of rumors about GMOs on social media (Du and Rachul, 2012).

Rumor diffusion and the echo chamber effect

Rumor can be defined as unverified information containing instrumentally valuable
statements of public concern (DiFonzo and Bordia, 2007). Although its precise definition
continues to vary among scholars, rumors are widely considered to be stories or statements
widely disseminated without confirmation or certainty as to their factuality. Rumors can be
either true or false, and their distinct stylistic dimensions can prompt different patterns of
diffusion. Similarly, classifying rumors as either true or false, Vosoughi et al. (2018) examined
rumor cascades on Twitter to find that rumors identified as false spread more rapidly than
ones identified as true. In view of those findings, demonstrably false rumors may be
especially provocative and interesting.
In recent scholarly work on rumors, researchers have probed the spread of single and
multiple rumors about a variety of topics, developed theoretical models of rumor diffusion as
well as methods of detecting rumors and performed interventions intended to curb the spread
of rumors (Ciampaglia et al., 2015; De Domenico et al., 2013; Gupta and Kumaraguru, 2012;
Tambuscio et al., 2015). Although insightful, the existing literature on rumors has largely
focused on individual differences in responding to rumors while ignoring the context of the
communities in which rumormongers are embedded. Existing studies of rumors suggest that
what individuals believe often relates to their local network (DiFonzo et al., 2014). More
specifically, individuals make judgments according to the standards that they share with the
people around them, and such communities of judgment provide the basis for whether
individuals view the decisions of their in-group as legitimate (Difonzo, 2018). Likewise, early
research on rumors revealed that the content of rumors was closely linked to social
boundaries in offline contexts, and divisive rumors can demographically or socially split
individuals and groups (Fine, 2007). As a case in point, rumors spread among women about
being attacked by male sexual predators have been shown to polarize men and women (Fine,
2007). In online contexts, the activation of rumors was found to be driven by social
reinforcement in the neighborhood (De Domenico et al., 2013). An individual is more likely to
spread a rumor if most of his or her friends are tweeting the rumor repeatedly.
From a social network perspective, communities operate as subgroups or clusters in
which nodes are substantially more connected to one another than to nodes outside the
network (Wasserman and Faust, 1994). The existence of clusters has been understood as
evidence of echo chambers, in which individuals tend to preferentially connect to the nodes
within a cluster and form an ideologically homophilous community (Bessi et al., 2015; Schmidt
et al., 2017). In recent work, researchers have found empirical evidence about the formation of
echo chambers on social media (e.g. Bessi et al., 2015; Medaglia and Yang, 2017; Schmidt et al.,
2017; Schmidt et al., 2018). For instance, by tracking several years’ worth of Facebook data to
investigate whether users become polarized on the social media platform, Schmidt et al. (2017)
revealed that the consumption of information on Facebook is dominated by the echo chamber
effect as well as that users tend to visit very few pages and to create distinct communities.
Previous research has pointed out the link between the phenomena of echo chamber and
rumor diffusion (T€ornberg, 2018). Homogeneous clusters of users self-select their social
INTR networks because of confirmation bias and selective exposure, which provide fertile ground
for rumors to thrive. Increased polarization, together with the propagation of misinformation
through social networks, has thus drawn increasing scholarly attention. A large-scale
analysis of rumor-related tweets and retweets found that rumors disseminated by echo
chamber members spread faster and are more viral than those that are not disseminated by
echo chamber members (Choi et al., 2020). Schmidt et al.’s (2017) study of news consumption
on Facebook showed that rumor diffusion was mainly driven by the polarization of users on
specific topics rather than the lack of fact-checking online.
Existing studies have shown that the formation of echo chamber on social media varies by
platform (e.g. social medium or news medium) and type of social networks (e.g. friendship
network or information network). Echo chamber effect may dominate in friendship networks
(e.g. Bakshy et al., 2015; Schmidt et al., 2017) but is less obvious in information networks (e.g.
Colleoni et al., 2014; Williams et al., 2015). Microblogging websites such as Twitter and Weibo
are both a social medium and a news medium (Kwak et al., 2010). Considering all those trends
and findings, in our study, we investigated whether “homophilous communities” also exist in
discussions of GMO rumors on Weibo. Instead of just focusing on one type of network, we
examined the community structure in both user interaction- and topic-based networks. To
guide that trajectory of our research, we devised the following research question:
RQ1. To what extent do users’ discussions involving rumors about GMOs on Weibo
resemble echo chambers?

Interaction between communities: like-minded and cross-cutting discussions

As Bruns (2017) has pointed out, the boundary for echo chamber is not simply whether social
(media) networks exhibit clustering tendencies, but to what extent such communities prompt
the exclusion of outsiders. In response, some researchers have found highly segregated
communities on social media, whereas others have shown that viral information on social
media can permeate into different communities (Weng et al., 2013). Reflecting the latter view,
Holbert et al. (2010) have concluded that the extent to which social media users deliberately
avoid dissonant views online has been exaggerated in research. Altogether, it seems that
interactions on social media can generate homogeneous groups but do not necessarily shut
out ideologically incongruent opinions (Vaccari et al., 2016). Compared with offline networks,
online networks are thought to expand exposure to more diversified information. Because
social media afford connectedness among individuals with otherwise weak ties (De Meo et al.,
2014), their users are likely to encounter novel viewpoints unlike what commonly circulates in
more closely knit social circles (Kim et al., 2013).
Social media also afford the possibility of being inadvertently exposed to different views
(Brundidge, 2010). In particular, Weibo as a news medium (Kwak et al., 2010) supports the
formation of information networks, in which plenty of weak ties and even hidden links exist.
Briefly, weak ties refer to a person’s relatively distant acquaintances who are likely to differ from
him or her, whereas hidden links are relationships formed because of a shared interest or co-
membership on a social media platform (Huberman et al., 2008). In both cases, the existence of
long-distance affiliations facilitates the inadvertent exposure to heterogeneous information and
opinions (Brundidge, 2010; Colleoni et al., 2014). Accordingly, Lev-On and Manin (2009) have
described online communication as a “mixed blessing” in light of its deliberative affordances, in
that it provides both “unintentional exposure to opposing views, as well as ‘drivers’ that channel
users away from opposing views” (p. 105). Interactions among echo chamber members are likely
to amplify and reinforce opinions shared, whereas interactions with antagonistic viewpoints may
lead to attitudinal change or intensify the controversy (Bonchi et al., 2019; Vaccari, 2013).
Despite all those research efforts, scholars have yet to examine interactions among
counter-attitudinal groups in the context of online science communication. Nevertheless, it is
worth characterizing such interactions, which, in China, are readily available within GMO- Viral
related online discussions. In that case, investigations should address the extent to which misinformation
cross-cutting exchanges occur in the diffusion of rumors about GMOs and whether
conversations about such a shared public concern facilitate the exchange of opinions across
and echo
communities. On the latter point, studies addressing similar topics such as climate change chambers
(Williams et al., 2015) and traditional Chinese medicine (Chen et al., 2018) have suggested that
conversations on social media do not facilitate cross-cutting exchange. Considering all of the
above, we formulated a second research question to guide our study:
RQ2. To what extent do Weibo users engage in cross-cutting exchanges in response to
rumors about GMOs?
In addition to quantifying the structural aspects of interactions between communities, we
investigated the nature and content of the discussions between and within communities. A
comment can convey support or disapproval. If the comment clearly communicates and
substantiates its claims, it is more likely to exert an influence on the deliberative potential of
an online discussion. In research addressing users’ online comments, scholars have focused
on information-seeking and information-sharing behaviors and even the nature of affective
factors such as emotions and feelings. For instance, categorizing users’ comments on Twitter
posts with rumors as emotion-related, information-related, deliberative or calling for action,
Chua et al. (2017) found that most discussions were emotion- or information-related ones.
Along similar lines, Zhang et al. (2013) have suggested that users’ interactions in a Facebook
diabetes group were structured around information, emotion and community-building. In one
of the rare studies on interactions between segmented communities, Zollo et al. (2015)
analyzed and compared emotions in debates on Facebook about science versus conspiracy
theories. They found that the more that users engaged in discussions, the more they tended to
express negative emotions.
In other research, the anonymity of the digital environment proved able to lessen the
quality of online comments (e.g. Rowe, 2015). Uncivil, hateful and prejudicial discourse
was more likely to surface when users were engaged in conversations about highly
polemic issues (Berg, 2016). Investigating like-minded discussions in a study using online
investment discussion boards, Tang et al. (2017) found that skewed assessments,
exacerbated by the insular nature of the online community and its social structure,
resulted in underperforming investment advice. With respect to cross-cutting discussions,
empirical evidence suggests that members of different communities may frequently
retweet each other’s posts, and that rational or meaningful conversations between
communities seldom occur (Chen et al., 2018). Moreover, exposure to disagreeable, uncivil
talk about politics induced anger and aversion, which in turn reduced satisfaction with
online political discourse (Gervais, 2015).
In our study, we first classified Weibo users’ comments on posts containing GMO-related
rumors into supporting and dissenting comments. Such comments could be facts or
emotional judgments implying positive or negative preferences concerning the issue at hand.
Thus, guided by two more research questions, we examined the extent to which supporting
and dissenting comments were respectively related to emotions, related to information or
uncivil:
RQ3. What is the nature and content of Weibo users’ comments on GMO rumor posts in
terms of information seeking and sharing, emotional expression and level of
incivility?
RQ4. Do supporting and dissenting comments differ in their content-related features (i.e.
information seeking and sharing, emotional expression and level of incivility)?
INTR Method
Data collection
Our project focused on scientific rumors about GMOs that circulated on Weibo in 2018. Using
the term “genetically modified” in a search on Weibo, we identified 139,319 posts addressing
GMOs published from January 1 to December 31, 2018. Next, we created a library of rumors
about GMOs by collecting rumors from websites that had already published rumors about
GMOs. Two research students were recruited and educated about GMOs. We randomly
selected 2% of the collected posts and asked the coders to classify 500 of them as either
rumors or non-rumors. The coding achieved a Cohen’s kappa (κ) value of 0.95. Disagreements
among coders were resolved through discussion, and the coders coded the rest of the data
separately. After integrating their coding results and fact-checking online content, we
compiled a list of keywords related to rumors about GMOs. Trigram or bigram phrases were
combined manually by the researchers, with the aim to identify as many rumor-related
messages as possible. Using the rumor-related keywords and phrases as seeds, we identified
21,837 rumor-related discussions (15.7% of all GMO-related messages), including original
posts and reposts.
To exclude rumors of relatively small size, we selected original posts (n 5 345) that had
received more than 20 comments (Guo et al., 2018; Shin et al., 2017). This subset of rumors was
then coded for veracity by two researchers. We searched for reliable sources to support our
coding decisions and resolved disagreement through discussion. We coded each rumor as a
“true rumor” if delivered information reflects scientific evidence (n 5 103, 29.9%) or a “false
rumor” if what it described is unlikely or untrue (n 5 227, 65.8%). Otherwise, 15 rumors
(4.3%) were classified as “unclear,” because no evidence could firmly support or refute the
content.
To address RQ3 and RQ4, we randomly selected 20 of the 345 rumors and coded the
attitude of their comments (ncomment 5 3,170). Of those 20 rumors, 13 were classified as true
rumors, five as false rumors and two as being unclear. All comments on the 20 rumors were
classified by two coders as: endorsing (i.e. comments that repeat or confirm the original post),
rejecting (i.e. comments that deny or reject the original posts) or unclear (i.e. comments
without a clear attitude). We chose those categories to span a continuum of views and avoid
ambiguity between categories. Presented with both the comment and the original post, two
coders coded the comments into three categories based on the mentioned coding scheme. We
tested the intercoder reliability and found a κ value of 0.90. Based on the results of coding,
users’ attitudes toward GMOs were classified as supportive, opposed or unclear.
To compare the content-related features of the endorsing and rejecting comments, we
coded the comments as emotional (i.e. the comment contains affective expression),
information-oriented (i.e. the comment provides or requests additional information) or
uncivil (i.e. the comment is abusive, threatening or prejudiced against others). This
categorization was not mutually exclusive. Intercoder reliability test found κ values ranging
from 0.81–0.93, all of which were acceptable and suggest that the results of classification were
robust. Last, we used the automated coding in the software TextMind (Gao et al., 2013) to
identify positive and negative emotions in the comments.

The co-commenter network

To explore patterns of community structure and membership related to the rumors, we
established an affiliation network between rumors and users. In social network analysis,
affiliation networks are two-mode networks that map the relationship between two types of
nodes (Wasserman and Faust, 1994). In our study, the first type of nodes was Weibo users,
whereas the second was GMO-related rumors. Our two-mode network consisted of 345
rumors and the 25,126 users who commented on them. Next, we transformed the two-mode
affiliation network into a single-mode network such that if a user commented on rumors i and Viral
j, then rumors i and j were considered to have a tie. The rumor co-membership network was a misinformation
non-directed and weighted network. By transforming the rumor-to-user affiliation network
into a single-mode rumor-to-rumor network, we were able to infer the extent to which false
and echo
rumors were connected to true rumors in discussions. chambers
To identify the community structure of the rumor co-membership network, we calculated
the assortativity coefficient of the network based on rumors’ veracity. The assortativity
coefficient measures the level of homophily of the network based on a node-level attribute
(Newman, 2002) – essentially, the Pearson correlation of behaviors between linked nodes
(Aral et al., 2009). The assortativity coefficient r falls within the range
1 ≤ r ≤ 1 and is
defined as:
r ¼ ðsumðeði; jÞ; iÞ
sumðaðiÞbðiÞ; iÞÞ=ð1−sumðaðiÞbðiÞ; iÞÞ;

in which e(i,j) is the fraction of edges connecting vertices i and j, a(i) is sum(e(i,j), j) and b(i) are
sum(e(i,j), i).

The comment thread network

To explore the community structure of the discussions about GMO rumors on social media,
we constructed a comment thread network such that if user i commented on a rumor-related
message posted by user j, then we acknowledged a link between i and j in the network. The
rumor discussion network was a directed, weighted network. This network mapped the
relationship between 1,631 users involved in posting and commenting on the 20 selected
rumors about GMOs.
We identified influential users in the discussion network by using multiple social
network metrics, including number of fans (>12,000, n 5 88), indegrees (>4, n 5 57) and k-
core members (k 5 4, n 5 64). Number of fans measured the populousness of the user’s
direct audience, whereas indegrees was the total number of comments received by the user
in the rumor diffusion network. Last, used to gauge so-called “coreness,” k-core was used as
a measure to identify minor but interconnected core entities within a network. To be
included in the k-core, every node has to be connected to at least k other nodes in the group
(Hanneman and Riddle, 2011). Because researchers have suggested that the influence of a
user in a network is a multidimensional construct that should be measured with multiple
indexes (e.g. Wang et al., 2016), we used the three measures to identify influential users in
social networks.
To measure the level of attitude-based homophily in the user interaction network, we also
calculated the assortativity coefficient. Another way to examine the echo chamber effect is by
assessing heterogeneity, defined as the balance between members holding supportive and
opposing perspectives (Williams et al., 2015) and measured as:
H ¼ 1
js
oj = js þ oj;

in which s is the observed frequency of supporters, and o is the observed frequency of

opponents. That measure returns a value on a linear scale from 0 (i.e. perfect homogeneity, in
which only supporters or opponents exist) to 1 (i.e. perfect heterogeneity, in which equal
proportions of supporters and opponents exist).

Results
We identified 345 Weibo posts from 2018 containing GMO rumors that had received more
than 20 comments. Among them, we found 103 true rumors (i.e. delivering scientific
information), 227 false rumors (i.e. delivering unlikely or untrue information) and 15 unclear
INTR rumors. Table 1 listed some examples of the three types of rumors. The average number of
replies was 128.25 (SD 5 255.91) for the false rumors and 113.56 (SD 5 234.19) for the
true ones.

The co-commenter network

The rumor co-commenter network was a small but dense network, with 345 nodes and 761
co-memberships (density 5 0.030). The most centric rumors were connected to 18 other
rumors in the network, which implies users interested in GMOs screened a large number of
rumors at once. As shown in the rumor co-commenter network in Figure 1, the connections
between the true and false rumors were intense, and no clear separation formed between their
corresponding discussion communities. On the contrary, overlaps emerged between the
communities circulating true and false rumors. The rumor co-commenter network’s
assortative coefficient, indicating the extent to which nodes were clustered based on
veracity, was 0.15. That result suggests that the network had a low level of veracity-based
homophily, and that users tended to comment on both true and false rumors.

The comment thread network

The comment thread network, though a sparse one with 1,631 nodes and 3,170 edges
(density 5 0.001), nevertheless represented a cohesive community, with values of reciprocity
(0.097) and transitivity (0.003) that were higher than those in networks previously examined
(e.g. Peng et al., 2016). Such results indicate that users grouped by the GMO-related topic were
tightly connected with each other. At the same time, the assortative coefficient of the
comment thread network based on users’ attitudes toward GMO was 0.13, which implies a
low level of polarization among users. Together with what the homophily analysis of the
rumor co-commenter network revealed, such findings suggest a low level of the echo chamber
effect in discussions about GMOs on Weibo.
To understand the distribution of opinions expressed about GMOs on social media, we
analyzed the distribution of attitudes among influential users identified by number of fans,

Category Search keyword

True Genetically modified and [Genetically modified foods lead to sterilization] is actually a
rumor sterilization conspiracy theory, and crossbreed is also a type of genetic
modification
False Genetically modified and The incidence of tumors in Chinese children is increasing by 2.8%
rumor tumor per year. In western countries, tumor is a disease that mainly
occurs in elderlies over 50 years old. Nowadays, after the high
incidence of tumor in young people, it starts to increase in children
in China. The reason is because of the very difference of China
from the world: China is the only country on the planet where most
people eat genetically modified foods
Genetic modification and Genetic modification can cause infertility, mules are the genetically
infertility modified result of horses and donkeys, and few of them are fertile.
The health of the next generation lies in your choice!
Unclear Genome editing and detect [New genetic modification methods such as genome editing cannot
be detected] Whose right to interpret the data after detecting
genetically modified foods?
Table 1. Note(s): Coding of rumors’ veracity was conducted by the researchers referring to articles and publications
Example of true, false from reliable sources, such as Chinese Academy of Science (http://www.cas.cn/), Ministry of Agriculture and
and unclear rumors Rural Affairs (http://www.moa.gov.cn/) and Guokr (a popular science website: https://www.guokr.com/)
 Viral
misinformation
and echo
chambers

Figure 1.
The rumor co-
commenter network.
Left: false rumors
(n 5 227); top-right:
true rumors (n 5 103);
bottom-right:
unclear (n 5 15)

indegrees and k-core. The heterogeneity score for the full network was 0.41, and for
subgroups defined by number of fans, indegrees and k-core were 0.75, 0.71 and 0.51,
respectively. Overall, opposing views dominated the discussions about GMOs, especially
among users in the entire network and the subgroup defined by k-core. We found that
opponents significantly outnumbered supporters in both of those groups (Figure 2).
As shown in Figure 3, the discussion networks exhibited segregations of users (i.e. nodes)
according to their views on GMOs, presented by three colors. Whereas GMO opponents
formed the majority in the full networks (Figure 3a), some supporters were located at the core
of the networks as well (Figure 3b–d). More interactions (i.e. links) occurred among
like-minded users (29.4%), although less often between users espousing different views
(13.9%). In other words, the discussion network demonstrated homogeneity as well, which
suggests that individuals on social media tend to discuss topics concerning GMOs with
others similar to them. Among other results, half of the discussions presented unclear views
on GMOs (49.7%), in which only emotions or emojis, mostly negative ones, and hate speech
were presented. That finding highlights that a large portion of online discussions about
GMOs do not convey meaningful information. In general, as heterogeneity analysis revealed,
a mixture of homophily and heterophily emerged in users’ discussions concerning rumors
about GMOs.

Cross-cutting exchange on genetically modified organism rumors

To answer RQ2, we examined the amount of cross-cutting exchange in users’ responses to
rumors about GMOs. Our results suggest that users responded to true and false rumors
differently; true rumors were more often rejected (21.2%) than false ones (6.5%) but received
fewer endorsements (9.3%) than false ones (61.7%) as well.
To elucidate the nature of interactions between members of the discussions about GMOs,
we analyzed the content of the discussions (RQ3 and RQ4). Of the 3,170 post-reply
interactions, 32.2% (n 5 1,020) were interactions between like-minded users, 23.2% (n 5 735)
were between users with opposing views and 44.6% (n 5 1,415) involved at least one user
who demonstrated an unclear attitude. The results of an additional one-way analysis of
variance showed that cross-cutting interactions generally contained a significantly greater
amount of emotions – and more negative ones – as well as information and incivility than
INTR

Figure 2.
Frequency of
influential users’
attitude toward GMO.
Panels show data for
influential users
identified by different
indexes. Bars within
each box represent
frequencies for (left to
right) opponents
(contrarian view on
GMO), supporters
(supporting
mainstream GMO
science or policies) and
unknowns (no clear
attitude could be
identified)

Figure 3.
Distribution of user
attitudes in the (a) full
network and in
subgroups identified
by (b) number of fans
(>12,000); (c) indegree
(>4); (d) k-core (k 5 4).
Node size was scaled to
the corresponding
index
interactions among the like-minded or between users without a clear attitude. At the same Viral
time, interactions between like-minded users contained a significantly higher level of misinformation
emotionality, both negative and positive, as well as incivility than ones between users
without a clear attitude. Somewhat remarkably, the interactions between users without a
and echo
clear attitude contained a higher level of information than ones between the like-minded chambers
(Table 2).

Discussion
Our findings contribute to knowledge about rumor diffusion on social media by presenting
empirical evidence of the community structure formed within discussions of GMO rumors
posted on China’s Twitter-like Weibo. We empirically tested the echo chamber effect in
shaping social media users’ responses to rumors about GMOs in the Chinese context. Our
findings suggest that some social media users are substantially more likely to engage with
like-minded others. Users active in online discussions of GMOs, either as activists or as
skeptics, tended to exhibit strong attitudes, while neutral views were largely absent.
Meanwhile, cross-cutting exchange did occur, albeit to a lesser extent than like-minded
exchange. In general, our findings confirm that microblogging platforms such as Weibo can
also function as public forums for discussing GMOs that may expose users to ideologically
cross-cutting viewpoints at times.

The echo chamber effect in rumor diffusion

Our results show that discussions about GMOs on social media are characterized by a weak
level of (a) veracity-based homophily in terms of rumor content and (b) attitude-based
homophily in terms of users. Moreover, our results reveal the coexistence of like-minded
interactions and cross-cutting exchange. Accordingly, some Weibo users are more likely to
form cohesive communities that support their views, as consistent with the notion of echo
chambers on social media. At the same time, we observed a large portion of users who
interacted with others who held different views, which increased the likelihood of cross-
cutting exposure overall. Such empirical evidence clarifies insights gained from offline
settings (e.g. Huckfeldt et al., 2004; Vaccari et al., 2016), namely, that heterogeneity persists on
social media despite the prevalence of homophily.
Previous research addressing a friendship network on Facebook and follower–followee
relationships on Twitter suggested strong attitude-based homophily (e.g. Schmidt et al., 2018;
Yang et al., 2017). However, our analysis of the rumor co-commenter network found that far
weaker homophily exists, at least on Weibo. Microblogging sites such as Twitter and Weibo
afford the establishment of social connections as well as information sharing. Users may form
strong ties with others whose views are consistent with their own, such as in friendships on
Facebook and reciprocal ties on Weibo, but also encounter others with different views via
weak ties, including in communities connected by shared interests.
Because increasingly more individuals rely on social media for news and information, the
structural features of social and information networks are likely to play an increasingly Table 2.
Proportion of emotion
expression, negative
emotion, positive
Emotion Negative Positive Information Incivility emotion, information-
N Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD seeking/sharing and
incivility in like-
Like-minded 1,020 0.60 0.49 0.33 0.47 0.35 0.48 0.19 0.39 0.43 0.49 minded, cross-cutting
Cross-cutting 735 0.69 0.46 0.46 0.50 0.37 0.48 0.64 0.48 0.32 0.47 and unknown
Unknown 1,415 0.49 0.50 0.25 0.43 0.25 0.43 0.53 0.50 0.50 0.50 interactions
INTR important role in shaping the diffusion of rumors. Using social media does not seem to
diminish the overall diversity of public views on GMOs. Instead of corroborating that people
receive only ideologically aligned information or opt out of accessing hard news altogether,
our work shows that social media expose individuals to ideologically cross-cutting
viewpoints. Counter-attitudinal interactions have implications for attitudes toward GMOs.
Existing research has revealed that exposure to a diversity of views is associated with a lower
likelihood of holding a polarized view (Levitan and Visser, 2009; Williams et al., 2015), which
could prevent the virality of rumor diffusion (Schmidt et al., 2017). Our findings suggest the
affordance of microblogging websites to expose individuals to perspectives from the other
side and the potential to change attitudes.
Our findings additionally suggest that the interaction networks formed on social media
should not be determined based solely on the relationship indicated by reposting or replying.
Although most studies on the topic to date have involved using reposts or replies to construct
networks, in our study we went a step further by constructing an interaction network with
reference to comment-based relationships. Specifically, we constructed a co-commenter
network and a comment thread network. Because a comment can often indicate a user’s
attitude toward the issue at hand, it affords researchers the opportunity to examine the
valence of ties in the interaction networks. By examining the valence of comments that bind
participants in a network, we found evidence suggesting the existence of cross-cutting
exchanges. In other words, the comment space provides a more or less open forum in which
users confront or express dissenting views. Knowing that, researchers should begin to
incorporate a more comprehensive measurement of interaction networks based on different
types of relationships. The method used in this study can be applied to gauge the echo
chamber effect and to assess the mechanisms (e.g. cross-cutting exchanges) allowing to break
out of the proverbial echo chambers. A practical implication of the finding is that promoting
scientific knowledge in the comment section may function to reduce the echo chamber effect
on social media.

Attitude heterogeneity among participants and opinion leaders

To examine the polarization of attitudes toward GMOs, we analyzed the opinions of all
users as well as opinion leaders identified by different criteria (i.e. influential users) in GMO-
related discussions. As a result, we observed strong attitude homogeneity across the
network and in four-core network, in which most participants were sceptics. More attitude
heterogeneity surfaced among influential users who received more comments and had
more fans.
The role of opinion leaders in shaping attitudes toward GMOs merits attention. The two-
step flow model of communication (Katz, 1957; Katz and Lazarsfeld, 1955) holds that media
influence is exerted via the intermediary actions of opinion leaders who interpret and
disseminate new information to others. In our study, we observed that though the most
influential users on social media, indicated by number of fans and indegrees, were largely
celebrities, news media outlets or governmental accounts, the overall discussion about
GMOs was dominated by sceptics. There was a tension of attitudes toward GMOs between
traditional opinion leaders and general users on Weibo, which echoes survey findings that
Chinese consumers are cautious in trusting the opinion of scientists, news media and
governmental organizations (Cui and Shoemaker, 2018). Although traditional opinion
leaders have been vocal on Weibo, anti-GMO sentiments fueled by nongovernmental
organization media, activists and grass-root exposes and conspiracy theories (e.g. “GM
crops are a conspiracy of American imperialism to annihilate Chinese”) have spread as a
result. Traditionally, the tackling of rumors depends on news media, governments and
scientists. The findings suggest that the effectiveness of these traditional opinion leaders in
refuting rumor was on the decline. We should instead rely on a wider gamut of gatekeepers
to disseminate GMO-related knowledge and stimulate a dynamic conversation on Viral
social media. misinformation
Like-minded and cross-cutting interactions: information- or emotion-related?
Our results additionally show that in the cross-cutting interactions, 64% of the messages
and echo
provided or requested information, which was a significantly higher rate than in interactions chambers
among the like-minded (19%). Such empirical evidence was inconsistent with prior studies in
the political context (e.g. Rojecki and Meraz, 2016; Shin et al., 2017) and the general context
(e.g. Zollo et al., 2015) which found seeking information was largely absent in rumor-related
discussions. This inconsistency might be related to the particularity of the Chinese context, in
that discussions about GMOs on Chinese social media often involve enumerating facts or
providing additional information in debates. The pro-GMO camp often shares and
disseminates information on the scientific consensus formed around GM technology,
whereas the anti-GMO camp often cites factual evidence that stresses the uncertainties and
possible environmental and health risks of GMOs. This finding provides guidelines for the
practice of promoting popular science of GMO on social media. Practitioners could provide
more reliable sources for fact checking. The evidence-based knowledge of GMOs should be
disseminated to restore the public’s confidence in science’s ability to address public health
and environmental concerns.
By comparison, our results included that most like-minded interactions (60%) expressed
emotions, and only 19% of like-minded interactions had comments that requested or
provided information. Such findings support previous assumptions that interactions
between like-minded people tend to reinforce a shared view regardless of the narrative,
which may fuel the viral spread of rumors. At the same time, our results also indicate that
cross-cutting interactions contain a higher level of incivility and negative emotions than other
kinds of interactions. Rational debates about the benefits and drawbacks of GMOs remain an
ideal on Chinese social media. Our study contributes knowledge to the literature by
distinguishing like-minded from cross-cutting interactions and by examining the nature of
those interactions.

Limitation and future work

It should be noted that social media content varies by type, including text, images, audio,
video, or a combination. Because the scope of our study was limited to the text, images and
videos should be examined in future studies, even if they require a greater variety of analytic
methods. At the same time, the discussions that we observed on Weibo represent only a slice
of the larger cyberspace in which rumors go viral. It is possible that the discussion and
diffusion of rumors are shaped by different types of media platforms and communication,
either independently or conjunctly (e.g. other social media platforms, news media websites
and private communication). In addition, a longitudinal study of rumor diffusion could
illuminate the dynamics of online community formation and conflict resolution. Such
research might ask whether cross-cutting interactions reach consensus over time or become
segmented as a result of ideological differences. Another question is what the driving factors
behind the viral spread of rumors on social media are, both individual- and network-wise. By
targeting a longer period in a design that is not cross-sectional, researchers could address
those and other lines of inquiry.

Conclusion
One major contribution of this study is that it systematically examined the network structure
formed around the discussion of rumors about GMOs on one of China’s most popular social
media platforms. On the one hand, this study established the existence and extent of the echo
INTR chamber effect in the interaction networks. On the other hand, we found that rumors not only
bounced around through these echo chambers. Moreover, Weibo also served as a public
forum for GMO discussions in which cross-cutting ties between communities existed. Most
studies to date have involved constructing interaction networks based on reposts only, which
precludes any further examination of the valence of ties. We constructed an interaction
network with reference to comment-based relationships that encompassed two types of
networks: the co-commenter network and the comment thread network. Because a comment
can often convey a user’s attitude, our strategy afforded us the opportunity to examine the
valence of users’ ties in the interaction networks. We also distinguished like-minded
interactions from cross-cutting exchanges, and our findings testified to their coexistence. Our
network analysis revealed that though a certain level of homophily existed in the interaction
networks, referring to the observed echo chamber effect, Weibo also seemed to serve as a
public forum for GMO discussions in which rumors could spread from community to
community. A considerable amount of interactions emerged between the pro- and anti-GMO
camps, and most of them involved providing or requesting information, which could mitigate
the likelihood of opinion polarization. By extension, our findings suggest that microblogging
sites such as Weibo have the potential to challenge the flow of rumors. Last, our study
revealed the declining role of traditional opinion leaders (e.g. scientists, state media and
government institutions) and the lack of alternative sources for fact-checking content on
Weibo. Such trends pose the potential concern that rumors about GMOs may more easily go
unchecked and viral on Chinese social media. In response, researchers should explore the
roles of different types of opinion leaders in rumor diffusion, which could help to guide the
development of efficient debunking strategies.

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About the authors

Xiaohui Wang is a Research Assistant Professor at the Department of Journalism, Hong Kong Baptist
University. His research focuses on the consumer health informatics, social media analytics and human–
computer interaction, which reflect the interdisciplinary feature of communication research. Dr. Wang’s
INTR research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Computers in Human Behavior,
Telematics and Informatics, Health Communication, Journal of Medical Internet Research and
Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social networking.
Yunya Song is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Director of AI and Media
Research Lab, Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research on new media and political communication
has appeared in, among other journals, International Journal of Press/Politics, New Media and Society,
Computers in Human Behavior and Social Science Computer Review. She is the Co-Editor of The Evolving
Landscape of Media and Communication in Hong Kong (City University of Hong Kong Press, 2018).
Yunya Song is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected]

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