We live in an age when there is unprecedented access to information through the Internet. Though this provides the ability for the world to become more connected, educated and informed on global news, the downside is that information online constantly changes, and the pace and extent of this change is not something the general population is aware of. As information changes, facts are often distorted through oversimplification and exaggeration to attract readership, leading to the creation and spread of misinformation. In this project, I aimed to explore how this process takes place through analyzing the life cycle of a specific academic article.

Fake news and misinformation is one of the most salient problems of our time. In the future, I hope to add to the growing literature on this subject by replicating this type of network analysis study on a greater scale. This would enable me to make conclusions about the general trends of how information spreads throughout the media, and continue to trace the life cycle of science information and, even more importantly, misinformation, back to its sources.

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