Fake news that manipulates political elections, strikes financial systems  and even incites riots is more viral than real news online, resulting in unstable societies and buffeted democracy. The easier contagion of fake news online can be causally explained by the greater anger it carries.  Offline questionnaires reveal that anger leads to more incentivized audiences in terms of anxiety management and information sharing and accordingly makes fake news more contagious than real news online . Our results suggest that the digital contagion of emotions, in particular anger, should be comprehensively considered in profiling the spread of online information . Cures such as tagging anger in social media could be implemented to slow or prevent the contagion of fake news at the source.
Fake news that manipulates political elections, strikes financial systems , and even incites riots is more viral than real news online, resulting in unstable societies and buffeted democracy. The easier contagion of fake news online can be causally explained by the greater anger it carries. The same results in Twitter and Weibo indicate that this mechanism is independent of the platform. Moreover, mutations in emotions like increasing anger will progressively speed up the information spread. Specifically, increasing the occupation of anger by 0.1 and reducing that of joy by 0.1 will produce nearly 6 more retweets in the Weibo dataset. Offline questionnaires reveal that anger leads to more incentivized audiences in terms of anxiety management and information sharing and accordingly makes fake news more contagious than real news online . Cures such as tagging anger in social media could be implemented to slow or prevent the contagion of fake news at the source.
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The same results in Twitter and Weibo indicate that this mechanism is independent of the platform. Moreover, mutations in emotions like increasing anger will progressively speed up the information spread. Specifically, increasing the occupation of anger by 0.1 and reducing that of joy by 0.1 will produce nearly 6 more retweets in the Weibo dataset.
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. Our results suggest that the digital contagion of emotions, in particular anger, should be comprehensively considered in profiling the spread of online information