On X, Unverified Accounts Outpace Mainstream News in Sharing Israel-Hamas Updates
Several influential yet unreliable accounts, some even promoted by Elon Musk, have taken center stage in disseminating news about the Israel-Hamas conflict on Twitter, surpassing established mainstream news outlets. This revelation comes from research conducted by the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public. Their analysis of viral posts about the conflict over three days in October uncovered that these accounts have accelerated the pace of news dissemination on the platform, making it more chaotic and influenced by Musk himself.
The study underscores the growing concern over the spread and incentivization of news and information on Twitter, especially during periods of heightened political and military tension such as the Israel-Hamas conflict. A separate analysis by NewsGuard, a nonpartisan organization monitoring false narratives online, found that verified accounts were responsible for nearly 75 percent of the most viral misinformation related to the conflict.
“This occurs in an environment that has been shorn of many of the ‘credibility signals’ that served to ground users in the past — checkmarks that indicated notability, fact-checks distributed through Twitter Trends, and Twitter/X-based labeling of deceptive content,” the researchers wrote. “Even fundamental affordances of the web — such as simple sourcing through links — have been devalued by the platform, and, perhaps as a result, by the new elites that now direct its users’ attention.”
Elon Musk's role in amplifying these new elite accounts is evident through his interactions with them. Musk often follows, replies to, and directly recommends these accounts, thereby contributing to their increased prominence as news-focused sources. The common traits among these "new elites" include frequent postings without thorough sourcing, the use of urgent terms like "BREAKING," and the sharing of emotionally charged content, such as footage of attacks and graphic images. The overwhelming volume of their tweets combined with a lack of context creates a constant stream of decontextualized violence and outrage. While the "new elites" differ in political affiliation, their approach to disseminating news exhibits striking similarities.
