Pretending Positive, Pushing False: Comparing Captain Marvel Misinformation Campaigns

It has become apparent that high-profile Twitter conversations are polluted by individuals and organizations spreading misinformation on the social media site. In less directly political or emergency-related conversations there remain questions about how organized misinformation campaigns occur and are responded to. To inform work in this area, we present a case study that compares how different versions of a misinformation campaign originated and spread its message related to the Marvel Studios’ movie Captain Marvel. We found that the misinformation campaign that more indirectly promoted its thesis by obscuring it in a positive campaign, #AlitaChallenge, was more widely shared and more widely responded to. Through the use of both Twitter topic group analysis and Twitter-Youtube networks, we also show that all of the campaigns originated in similar communities. This informs future work focused on the cross-platform and cross-network nature of these conversations with an eye toward how that may improve our ability to classify the intent and effect of various campaigns.