[LOGOS] Fwd: LOGOS talk title and abstract

[Emiliano De Cristofaro]

Hi Everyone,

Next talk (Tuesday Feb 6th) will be given by Alexandros -- please see
details below.

Cheers,
Emiliano



---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Efstratiou, Alexandros <alexandros.efstratiou.20 at ucl.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, Feb 1, 2024 at 4:35 AM
Subject: LOGOS talk title and abstract
To: Emiliano De Cristofaro <emilianodc at cs.ucr.edu>

*Title: *Uncovering a false consensus in public Twitter discussions of
COVID-19 science

*Abstract:* Misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic was rife and was
marked by a lack of trust towards official guidance and health
institutions. As a result, many people engaged in potentially harmful
behaviors like opposing vaccinations and masks, often invoking “science”
that ostensibly supported such views. In this talk, I will discuss these
public perceptions of science. We obtain scientific papers on COVID-19 in
medical and biological fields and use them to approximate true scientific
consensus on several COVID-19 issues. We then examine mentions of these
papers on the Twitter platform, finding that anti-consensus posts and users
are vastly over-represented relative to pro-consensus ones. Moreover,
scientific papers that are capable of supporting anti-consensus views
receive substantially more attention and engagement on Twitter. In a
qualitative examination of scientific discussions, we find that
anti-consensus users often misrepresent the papers they discuss, for
example by cherry-picking findings or attacking scientists’ integrity. This
has important implications for the creation of long-lasting narratives
around the pandemic.
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