The effects of personality traits on the lifetime of a rumor

Abstract

Social media platforms have limited mechanisms for authenticating the veracity of the shared information. This leads to widespread rumors and misinformation. Quite often, these rumors can lead to drastic consequences such as shocking the stock market or violent actions against target groups. Understanding the factors that lead to rumor propagation is key to its detection and eventual mitigation. Accordingly, this paper studies the possible factors that may influence how a rumor spreads. We discuss the types of personality traits that are more likely to participate in the propagation of a rumor, and present a survey of pertinent research efforts that support this claim. In addition, we offer an analysis of the lifetime of a rumor using a large dataset collected from Twitter, which shows that people with a higher number of followers are generally regarded to be more trustworthy and thus can influence the rate of propagation of a rumor. Our study leads us to confirm that personality traits affect the rate of spreading of a rumor.