Correlation Analysis of Reader’s Demographics and Tweet Credibility Perception

Abstract

When searching on Twitter, readers have to determine the credibility level of tweets on their own. Previous work has mostly studied how the text content of tweets influences credibility perception. In this paper, we study reader demographics and information credibility perception on Twitter. We find reader’s educational background and geo-location have significant correlation with credibility perception. Further investigation reveals that combinations of demographic attributes correlating with credibility perception are insignificant. Despite differences in demographics, readers find features regarding topic keyword and the writing style of a tweet to be independently helpful in perceiving tweets’ credibility. While previous studies reported the use of features independently, our result shows that readers use combination of features to help in making credibility perception of tweets