# Science vs Conspiracy: collective narratives in the age of (mis)information

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1408.1667 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1408.1667/

## Key facts

- Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 7 Aug 2014.

## Built on by (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [How Susceptible are LLMs to Influence in Prompts?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.11865/) (2024)
- [Investigating Memorization of Conspiracy Theories in Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.00379/) (2021)
- [Dataset of Fake News Detection and Fact Verification: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.03299/) (2021)
- [Pathways through Conspiracy: The Evolution of Conspiracy Radicalization through Engagement in Online Conspiracy Discussions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.10729/) (2022)
- [Characterizing Partisan Political Narrative Frameworks about COVID-19 on Twitter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.06960/) (2021)
- [Classifying Conspiratorial Narratives At Scale: False Alarms and Erroneous Connections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00141/) (2024)
- [Detecting Conspiracy Theory Against COVID-19 Vaccines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13003/) (2022)
- [BotSim: Mitigating The Formation Of Conspiratorial Societies with Useful Bots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.06154/) (2026)
- [Defensive Alliances in Signed Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06801/) (2023)
- [Uncovering Conspiratorial Narratives within Arabic Online Content](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14037/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The large availability of user provided contents on online social media facilitates people aggregation around common interests, worldviews and narratives. However, in spite of the enthusiastic rhetoric about the so called em wisdom of crowds, unsubstantiated rumors -- as alternative explanation to main stream versions of complex phenomena -- find on the Web a natural medium for their dissemination. In this work we study, on a sample of 1.2 million of individuals, how information related to very distinct narratives -- i.e. main stream scientific and alternative news -- are consumed on Facebook. Through a thorough quantitative analysis, we show that distinct communities with similar information consumption patterns emerge around distinctive narratives. Moreover, consumers of alternative news (mainly conspiracy theories) result to be more focused on their contents, while scientific news consumers are more prone to comment on alternative news. We conclude our analysis testing the response of this social system to 4709 troll information -- i.e. parodistic imitation of alternative and conspiracy theories. We find that, despite the false and satirical vein of news, usual consumers of conspiracy news are the most prone to interact with them.