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September 28, 2022

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Peer Reviewed


COMMUNITY-BASED STRATEGIES FOR COMBATING MISINFORMATION: LEARNING FROM A POPULAR
CULTURE FANDOM

Through the lens of one of the fastest-growing international fandoms, this study
explores everyday misinformation in the context of networked online
environments. Findings show that fans experience a range of misinformation,
similar to what we see in other political, health, or crisis contexts. However,
the strong sense of community and shared purpose of the group is the basis for
effective grassroot efforts and strategies to build collective resilience to
misinformation, which offer a model for combating misinformation in ways that
move beyond the individual context to incorporate shared community values and
tactics.

BY

Jin Ha Lee

Information School, University of Washington, USA

Nicole Santero

Department of Sociology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA

Arpita Bhattacharya

Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington, USA

Emma May

Information School, University of Washington, USA

Emma S. Spiro

Information School, University of Washington, USA

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Image: BTS Concert

TOPICS

 * Media Literacy
 * / Social Media
 * / Twitter


RESEARCH QUESTIONS

 * RQ1: What types of misinformation do fans encounter within the context of
   fandom?
 * RQ2: What strategies do fans report employing to navigate or combat
   misinformation?


ESSAY SUMMARY

 * This study employs virtual ethnography and semi-structured interviews of 34
   Twitter users from the ARMY fandom, a global fan community supporting the
   Korean music group BTS. 
 * A wide variety of mis-/disinformation is prevalent in the fandom context:
   similar to political, health, or disaster contexts, we observed forms of
   misinformation such as evidence collages, disinformation, playful
   misrepresentation, and perpetuating debunked content. 
 * The strong sense of community and shared goals of the fandom affect how users
   utilize, share, and combat misinformation using a variety of strategies:
   intentional playful use of misinformation as community-based humor, prominent
   disengagement strategies to actively discourage discovery and amplification
   of misinformation, and strategies focused on community members’ mental health
   and wellness.
 * ARMY fandom exemplifies community-based, grassroot efforts to sustainably
   combat misinformation and build collective resilience to misinformation at
   the community level, offering a model for others.
 * The users’ strategies are organized in the Activation-Engagement
   framework that can be used by future researchers and designers to 1) envision
   new media tools to scaffold a spectrum of engagement at individual and
   community levels, and 2) study other social groups as well as routine and
   non-routine contexts to identify and compare which everyday misinformation
   strategies are employed and effective.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


IMPLICATIONS 

Misinformation is recognized as a critical challenge for society (Calo et al.,
2021; O’Connor & Weatherall, 2019). Much of the growing body of empirical work
addressing this challenge focuses exclusively on crisis or high-stress contexts
such as natural disasters, terrorism, pandemics, or elections (Bail et al.,
2020; Benkler et al., 2018; Starbird et al., 2020). These contexts, which are
fertile ground for mis-/disinformation and leave us collectively vulnerable to
significant societal harm, have led to notable advances in our understanding of
the spread of information (Arif et al., 2018; Krafft & Donovan, 2020; Pennycook
& Rand, 2021), individual factors related to information processing
(Marwick, 2018; Yeo & McKasy, 2021), and the algorithmic tools used to identify
and curb the spread of mis-/disinformation (Wu et al., 2019; Zhou et al., 2019).
However, this scope limits our knowledge of how people encounter and deal with
misinformation in their daily lives, when they are less likely to be making
time-sensitive, emotionally charged, safety-critical, and/or rushed decisions.

Misinformation in everyday contexts is likely to be persistent and recurrent.
Although the resulting harms might be less visible and acute, it is no less
impactful. Increasing our understanding of the role of misinformation in
everyday online interactions can be useful as the strategies people develop here
are likely to be also used when non-routine situations arise. Our study
illustrates that the fan’s experience with misinformation is one such example of
community-based tactic for combating problematic information. Here, we follow
Jenkins’ definition of fans as “individuals who maintain a passionate connection
to popular media, assert their identity through their engagement with and
mastery over its contents, and experience social affiliation around shared
tastes and preferences” (2012). We study the music group BTS’ fandom called
ARMY, which is one of the largest, most diverse music fandoms today (Lee, 2019;
Lee & Nguyen, 2020) known for their active participation in mobilizing to
promote social good (Kanozia & Ganghariya, 2021; Park et al., 2021).

The fans in our study shared that they actively engage with a variety of social
media. Fans build community identity through shared interest and social support
(Park et al., 2021), but they also find themselves constantly confronted and
forced to question rumors, media reports, and unverified information. Issues of
language translation for global fanbases, algorithmic curation of content that
is strategically targeted, and notable false content designed to engage fans’
imagination and excitement further complicate their experience with
misinformation. 

Our work adds to the growing body of knowledge on misinformation, filling gaps
in our understanding by focusing on misinformation in everyday, routine
contexts: here, popular culture fandom. Not only do we see in our results that
fans experience a wide variety of mis-/disinformation similar to other
political, health, or disaster contexts (Lewandowsky & van der Linden, 2021;
Phadke & Mitra, 2021; SEIP, 2021; Starbird et al., 2020), but we see that fans
report a variety of different strategies for dealing with misinformation in the
fandom. Notably, the tactics that individuals and groups employ in these
settings were developed over time based on personal and social experiences, as
well as learned from peers within the community. As such, they have proved
effective for stemming the flow of problematic context, while also increasing
community resilience and well-being. Our work also complements the existing body
of work in fan studies regarding informal learning and transmedia literacy
(e.g., Hills, 2003; Jenkins, 2006; Scolari et al., 2018) by providing
insights on how people navigate a complex information space. 

Misinformation strategies are shared among social groups through informal
learning and mentoring. Groups formed around common identities and mutual
interests have a notable interest in building and maintaining community values
and group well-being through these activities. We propose the
Activation-Engagement framework (Figure 1) to organize and compare along two
dimensions the community-driven misinformation strategies discussed by
participants. The Activation dimension captures the range of fan activities and
behaviors based on timely and clear (in)action from the individual. The
Engagement/Distancing dimension captures the extent to which these actions
result in close engagement between the individual and the information versus
attempts to distance oneself or others from it. 

Figure 1. Activation-engagement framework for user strategies dealing with
misinformation.

Participants used different combinations of approaches depending on the
context. In some situations, participants stated that it was better to actively
deal with misinformation because there would be immediate and/or harmful
consequences for the fandom or artists (e.g., defaming). In other cases, they
noted that it could be better to take a more passive stance, especially if the
discussion contained baseless rumors or intent to provoke fans for engagement.

Likewise, participants sometimes chose approaches that directly dealt with
misinformation by engaging and/or amplifying the issues (e.g., checking for
official statements to verify the information) or approaches to distance
themselves from the issues (e.g., stop responding to stressful and triggering
tweets). In active distancing, participants try to remove the information they
do not want to see, whereas, in passive distancing, they remove themselves from
the information space. They also sometimes conceal information by using codes
for certain keywords or distract the users by flooding the space with other
information (e.g., hashtag hijacking, clearing searches).

The strategies fans have developed, shared, and implemented paint a more
holistic picture of how people deal with misinformation in their lives and
highlight how people can have agency beyond simply being passive receivers of
misinformation. Past approaches developed and advocated for by information
professionals tend to focus on evaluating the source and accuracy of
information, but the strategies presented herein highlight the role that the
user and social group can play. Beyond simply evaluating a particular piece of
information or the source, these new approaches emphasize the active role of
users in curating the information flow (Thorson & Wells, 2016) by carefully
selecting or blocking various sources and agents, and deciding to change the
distance between themselves and problematic information to take care of their
mental health. Furthermore, users try to positively control or influence the
information flow by using tactics to conceal the information, using private
channels to avoid unwanted attention from sensational news media, or sharing
screenshots so others can avoid accessing the source to minimize engagement with
the content, reducing the visibility and spread of the information. These are
examples of users engaging with mis-/disinformation in ways apart from merely
evaluating the information given to them. In a sense, fans are learning how
media manipulation and disinformation occur in the current information
ecosystem, a well-studied phenomenon in 4chan or other online subgroups (Marwick
& Lewis, 2017), and figuring out their own strategies for protecting themselves.

This framework could be used to expand our understanding of what “engagement”
means as an individual navigates misinformation beyond what is commonly observed
in social media. It can also be used to study and compare strategies that are
employed in different communities, as the characteristics and compositions of
user groups and their historical and cultural context could all affect which
strategies work. This understanding will help media literacy programs build
resilience to misinformation among different online communities in various
contexts. Social media platforms can also be designed to value users’ agency in
active and passive engagement and nudge them so that they do not always feel
pressured towards active engagement, for instance, using reminders to “take a
break from a heated conversation.”

Fandoms offer a rich opportunity to further study the growing complexities of
mis-/disinformation online and to provide new strategies to address them in an
everyday context. Importantly, fandoms tend to be a supportive place of
community, where individuals are invested in the success of others; the fandom
operates more as a social group than a simple collection of individuals (Park et
al., 2021). The fandom’s information work and currently employed tactics can be
a source of inspiration for other groups, especially when an abundance of
misinformation and sophisticated disinformation tactics cause feelings of
cynicism and helplessness.


EVIDENCE 

The landscape of misinformation encountered in fandom

Most participants reported encountering some kind of misinformation—defined as
“inaccurate, incorrect, or misleading” (Jack, 2017, p. 2) information—on Twitter
and recalled a few cases where they retracted or corrected information they
shared because it turned out to be false. Many considered the spread of
misinformation to be a problem within the fandom (e.g., “information can
sometimes come out so fast on Twitter…I think sometimes people will grab
whatever they get and run with it before it even becomes proven or disproven”
[P2]). Others discussed how being part of the fandom helped build stronger
information literacy skills (e.g., “I learned how to be really informed about
things, to research,” [P19]) and allowed them to become more aware of
misinformation in mainstream media (e.g., “I would never have noticed before how
controlling and xenophobic some media can be especially in the West,” [P2]).
Fans’ reports of their experiences mirrored results in other disinformation
domains (EIP, 2021).

Participants enumerated common types of misinformation in the fandom, including
rumors about BTS members and misinterpretations due to the translation of
materials through multiple languages (P23). The cultural context and nuances in
linguistic expressions were often lost during translation and sharing
reinterpretations (e.g., difficulty in translating a member’s pun).

Evidence collages. In addition to factually inaccurate information, participants
found cases of misleading information that was outdated, selectively presented
from different sources and contexts to support a particular narrative, or often
devoid of context (e.g., exposé threads that are a compilation of screen
captures of past tweets with a goal of accusing someone of doing something).
Krafft and Donovan (2020) refer to these kinds of media artifacts that are
strategically constructed to aggregate positive evidence and support
disinformation campaigns as “evidence collages.” 

For example, several participants mentioned that while fan-edited YouTube videos
are helpful to learn about the group when entering the fandom, they can be
misleading because they portray the members based on the creator’s selected
contexts. P1 shares how she was misled to believe that Big Hit (Now HYBE: the
entertainment company BTS belongs to) was exploiting BTS:

“For a while, you kind of believe it because they tailor evidence for their
argument. They show you these videos where they’re exhausted, and they’re just
falling out on the floor and Big Hit workers just moving past them and they only
show you that small clip… And I kind of had to learn for myself and see the full
clips later to say, ‘oh, the context was all off and BTS signed another
seven-year contract.’” (P1)

Disinformation agents. The boundary between mis-/disinformation was often
blurry. Clear cases of disinformation—those with malicious intent—often
originated from fan wars (i.e., conflicts with other fandoms). Several
participants discussed people from other fandoms pretending to be members of
ARMY and maliciously spreading false information. P3 reported hearing that some
accounts were paid to spread malicious content. P13 shared:

“They pretend to be an ARMY and they try to join some voting group to get some
detailed or secret message, like when will we start to vote, at which time, like
a spy.”

Playful misrepresentation. Another type of misinformation is from fans’ playful
engagement with exaggeration or misrepresentation of members (e.g., “Yoongi is
savage,” “Taehyung and Jungkook are in a relationship,” [P5]). Content is often
fabricated or manipulated, but with the intent to foster positive engagement and
community identity (Ringland et al., 2022). Some fans playfully engage
in shipping (fans who imagine a romantic relationship between members) content,
although not everyone believes it. P22 shared how people engage satirically on
Q&A sites like Quora about BTS, confusing new fans as well as outsiders of the
fandom” “The people answering…would have weird answers and they were like, ‘I’m
just kidding, I’m just kidding.’”

Perpetuating debunked content. Participants also discussed misinformation that
has been debunked but was difficult to remove. One example is the belief that
using emojis in a YouTube comment freezes the view counts (P4). Such information
was commonly shared in the comments section of music videos, and we observed
some ARMYs expressing frustration as the information seemed to perpetuate
despite multiple attempts to correct it. These “folk theories” of algorithmic
curation of information are common across domains (DeVito et al., 2018; Karizat
et al., 2021). The fandom context also illustrates recurrent misinformation
narratives and the challenge of debunking content (Cacciatore, 2021; EIP, 2021;
Mosleh et al., 2021).

Experiences and strategies for dealing with misinformation

Many participants actively engaged with misinformation to avoid and stop its
spread, such as countering it by providing links to evidence from credible
sources or clearing/flooding negative trends using other positive keywords. When
the post was a personal opinion, participants would try to engage in dialog
either on the Twitter post or in private messages to explain their perspective.
At times, they reach out to journalists to correct misinformation in media
coverage (e.g., P9, P20, P26, P27). They also disengaged with the conversation
or the account if it could harm them emotionally. A few participants found that
being silent was better than drawing attention to the false content by tweeting
or retweeting about it; asking people not to click on or engage with something
that may increase people’s curiosity (P7), thus drawing more engagement.

“It’s like, ‘Let’s clear the searches for Jin’ and when you see those posts with
100 likes, what’s the first thing you’re going to do? You’re definitely going to
search what Jin thing is trending.” (P12)

Participants heavily tailored the content on their timeline using both
precautionary and disengagement strategies. Precautionary strategies mentioned
by participants included being cautious about whom to follow by going through
people’s timelines and tweets. Over time, they developed specific criteria to
decide whom to follow. Participants also mentioned muting certain keywords on
Twitter as adding “another layer of safety” (P10). Being blocked by those
whom they considered malicious actors was also treated by some as an
accomplishment (P20).

Participants sometimes used more active disengagement strategies such as
blocking or unfollowing after they encountered accounts that spread
misinformation, views that participants disapproved of, and/or disturbing
content. Muting was a soft block strategy to shield themselves but in a less
confrontational way (e.g., “…because I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings,”
[P5]). P17 shared that they also muted phrases that often led to arguments, such
as names of other Kpop groups. Some participants talked about disengaging with
information that was perceived as invasions of artists’ privacy.

Overall, most participants mentioned being part of efforts to clarify or verify
information with a common goal of helping each other become more “informed.”
This form of care extended towards members of the ARMY community. P11
characterized the fandom as “a very giving and sharing fandom, and it is very
warm.” P6 reported that as a collective group, they believe ARMY can no longer
be deceived and are not gullible.


METHODS 

This study employs virtual ethnography and semi-structured interviews, along
with observation of social media data, to understand the types of misinformation
in the fan communities and the strategies they adopt to combat
misinformation. Virtual ethnography is an approach to investigating people’s
interactions and cultures in virtual worlds such as online communities (e.g.,
web-based discussion forums, group chats on messaging apps) (Boellstorff et al.,
2012). It allows researchers to explore social interactions in virtual
environments and gain a holistic understanding by immersing themselves in the
research setting for extended periods of time (Beneito-Montagut, 2011; Given,
2008). Three authors embedded themselves in the ARMY Twitter space to gain basic
insights related to the culture and practice of the fandom for two to three
years (2018/2019–2020). The ethnography allowed the researchers to ask relevant
interview questions and better understand the context explained by the
interviewees. The researchers discussed tweets and other online materials
related to the spread of misinformation, conversations around
misinformation, and relevant user strategies and took field notes. Based on this
work, an initial interview protocol asking about ARMY’s prior experiences
related to misinformation in the fandom, their perceptions of information
accuracy, practices for identifying trusted sources, ways to evaluate and share
information, and strategies for addressing and countering mis-/disinformation
was designed. The protocol was piloted with three fans and iterated on before
full deployment. Descriptive data about the social media profiles of fans—both
interview participants and others—were collected using the Twitter API.

We recruited interviewees on Twitter using a prominent BTS research account
(over 50k followers), as Twitter is one of the primary social networking
platforms for the fandom. Thus, the research insights here are primarily on the
fans’ strategies on Twitter, and further research is needed to understand the
user behavior on other social media platforms. The recruitment posts were
retweeted over 400 times and viewed over 60,000 times. In 2020, we asked
interested fans, 18 years old or above, to fill out a screener survey in which
they were asked about basic demographic information such as age, gender, race,
and nationality. Questions were also included about how long they have been a
BTS fan, the number of accounts they follow and the number of their followers,
whether they participated in collaborative fan efforts (e.g., donations,
campaigns), and how they would describe their involvement in the fandom. The
screener survey was completed by 652 participants; 34 were selected as
interviewees, chosen to represent a variety of fans. The demographics of the 34
interviewees are included in the appendix. The interviews were conducted between
July and September of 2020. Most interviews were between 90-120 minutes long.
Participants also provided social media usernames, allowing researchers to
collect account information using the Twitter API. We found that participants
ranged in their Twitter social network characteristics with incoming ties
ranging from just 5 to over 260K and outgoing ties ranging from 32 to 5K.
Participants also varied in their activity levels, with some posting over 350K
tweets during their account tenure and others having fewer than 20 total posts.
The interview protocol and process were approved by the Institutional Review
Board at the University of Washington.

We inductively analyzed the interview data through open coding (Corbin &
Strauss, 2015) on a qualitative data analysis platform, Dedoose. To create the
initial codebook, three researchers generated annotations capturing the concepts
from the transcripts and notes. This was followed by affinity diagramming to
organize annotations of similar themes, distilling them to a reduced set of
codes, and discussing how each code should be applied. After two researchers
independently coded four interview transcripts using the initial codebook, they
met to compare the coded results and discuss any discrepancies observed to reach
a consensus (Hill et al., 1997). The codes were iterated upon, and the final
codebook consisted of 15 thematic categories covering the participants’
networking behavior on social media, participants’ information sharing behavior,
characteristics of misinformation in fandom, and the strategies for addressing
misinformation.

Using the final codebook, the first coder coded the entire data set. The coders
wrote analytical memos on the higher-level themes. Researchers reviewed field
notes taken during ethnographic observations to triangulate additional data
related to the thematic areas. For instance, all the strategies presented in the
framework were mentioned by the interviewees, and researchers confirmed that
they commonly observed the use and recommendations of those strategies in the
ARMY Twitter space. The findings discussed in this article make use of
characteristics of misinformation and strategies for addressing misinformation
codes. 

PrintDownload PDF

TOPICS

 * Media Literacy
 * / Social Media
 * / Twitter

CITE THIS ESSAY

Lee, J. H., Santero, N., Bhattacharya, A., May, E., & Spiro, E. (2022).
Community-based strategies for combating misinformation: Learning from a popular
culture fandom. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review.
https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-105

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FUNDING

This project was supported by the University of Washington Center for an
Informed Public and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

COMPETING INTERESTS

The authors declare no competing interests.

ETHICS

The interview protocol and process were approved by the University of Washington
Human Subjects Division (HSD) (ID: 00010674). The informed consent to
participate in the study was obtained from all participants. The ethnicity,
gender, and age were self-reported by the participants and were used to recruit
diverse interviewees.

COPYRIGHT

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided that the original author and source are
properly credited.

DATA AVAILABILITY

This study primarily uses interview data that is anonymized but still can be
used to potentially identify individual participants and thus, the IRB restricts
us from openly sharing it outside of the research team.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors sincerely thank the interview participants who made this research
possible.

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