  In this work we study, on a sample of 2.3 million individuals, how Facebook
users consumed different information at the edge of political discussion and
news during the last Italian electoral competition. Pages are categorized,
according to their topics and the communities of interests they pertain to, in
a) alternative information sources (diffusing topics that are neglected by
science and main stream media); b) online political activism; and c) main
stream media. We show that attention patterns are similar despite the different
qualitative nature of the information, meaning that unsubstantiated claims
(mainly conspiracy theories) reverberate for as long as other information.
Finally, we categorize users according to their interaction patterns among the
different topics and measure how a sample of this social ecosystem (1279 users)
responded to the injection of 2788 false information posts. Our analysis
reveals that users which are prominently interacting with alternative
information sources (i.e. more exposed to unsubstantiated claims) are more
prone to interact with false claims.

Social and Information Networks;Computers and Society;Physics and Society