# Text Analysis Methods for Misinformation-Related Research on Finnish Language Twitter
## 2 Overview of Key Concepts
Yet, it has been shown that social media also serves as a networked public space for opposing parties to define, contest, and strategically leverage the \"fake news\" label to their respective interests, thus challenging democracy with the weaponized discourse of fake news. Moreover, the term \"fake news\" serves as a discursive device for ordinary citizens to consolidate group identity in everyday political utterances on Twitter [16]. Misinformation has an adverse societal impact because it accelerates propaganda, creates anxiety, induces fear, and sways public opinion [1]. Unfortunately, its speed, geographical reach, depth, and breadth exceed those of information, yet humans seldom detect misinformation [1; 17]. The social function of misinformation, i.e., sense-making, determines that ambiguous or potentially threatening contexts, such as crisis, is suitable soil for disseminated false information to breed and flourish, especially as fertilized by the information paucity and anxiety of people [23]. The active role of the audience in fake news is also emphasized. The audience seems to be involved in its co-construction, as the receiver determines the realness or fakeness of the news. When fake news is regarded as fake (i.e., fiction) by the receiver, the deception process has failed. Yet, when the deception process succeeds, the legitimacy of journalism is taken advantage of. The co-creative role of the audience is accentuated in the social media context due to the information exchange that comprises the negotiation and sharing of meanings. In social media, socialness expedites the construction of fake news by mitigating its penetration into social spheres. Social spheres are strengthened by information exchange, which potentially sidelines the quality of information. Therefore, the legitimizing role of the audience in future studies is called for [28]. Social media is regarded as a powerful global medium that influences people's perceptions of the world and their role in it [31]. Social media has raised critical concerns as context due to its popularity [3] as well as the rapid spread of fake news, thus causing potentially detrimental effects both on individuals and society [17; 32]. In particular, the rapid spread of false information on Twitter has caused concern [3; 17; 18]. On Twitter, the diffusion of falsehood (i.e., retweeting) is significantly farther, faster, deeper, and broader than the truth in all categories of information. This is particularly prevailing in the topic of politics. Two issues were conspicuous concerning fake news on Twitter. Firstly, the novelty that suggests that people share novel information. Secondly, the negative emotions that false stories inspired in replies: fear, disgust, and surprise. The rate of acceleration by robots (\"bots\") was the same for both true and false news. That implies that the spread of false news is caused by humans [17]. However, social bots (automated accounts impersonating humans) do play a role in magnifying the spread of fake news by orders of magnitude by liking, sharing, and searching for information [3]. The bot population on Twitter has been estimated to range from 9% to 15%. A recent exploratory study on Finnish Twitter on the scope of politically motivated abusive language focused on the extent to which it is perpetrated by inauthentic accounts, i.e., bots [33]. The results demonstrated that the messaging is mostly with very low levels of both bot and coordinated activity, i.e., it is human-induced. Furthermore, the minority of the identified bots were operating in the Finnish language, while most were using English in an automated or semi-automated manner. The themes that triggered abusive language concerning politics were government corruption and failure, sexism and homophobia, racism and Islamophobia, government handling of COVID-19, and education (in the context of COVID-19). Therefore, it is interesting to explore whether the same or similar themes are likewise related to misinformation on Finnish Twitter in general.