Exploring the Dynamics of Justification in the Wake of a Rumor Outbreak on Social Media

This paper explores the dynamics of justification in the wake of a rumor outbreak on social media. Specifically, it examines the extent to which the five types of justification—descriptive argumentation, presumptive argumentation, evidentialism, truth skepticism, and epistemological skepticism—manifested in different voices including pro-rumor, anti-rumor and doubts before and after fact-checking. Content analysis was employed on 1,911 tweets...