The Impact of Question Type and Topic on Misinformation and Trolling on Yahoo! Answers

摘要

Trolling and misinformation are ubiquitous on social media platforms, such as Yahoo! Answers. Yet, little is known about the impact of question type and topic on the extent of trolling and misinformation in answers on these platforms. We address this gap by analyzing 120 transactions with 2000 answers from two Yahoo! Answers categories: Politics & Government and Society & Culture. We found that trolling and misinformation are widespread on Yahoo! Answers. In most cases, trolling in questions was echoed by more trolling in answers, and misinformation in questions with more misinformation in answers. We also found that 1) more misinformation and more trolling were found in answers to conversational questions than to informational questions: 2) more misinformation occurred in answers to questions in politics than answers to questions in culture; and 3) trolling significantly differed between politics and culture.