The economy of attention in the age of (mis)information

In this work we present a thorough quantitative analysis of information consumption patterns of qualitativelydifferent information on Facebook. Pages are categorized, according to their topics and thecommunities of interests they pertain to, in a) alternative information sources (diffusing topics that areneglected by science and main stream media); b) online political activism; and c) main stream media.We find similar information consumption patterns despite the very different nature of contents. Then,we classify users according to their interaction patterns among the different topics and measure howthey responded to the injection of 2788 false information (parodistic imitations of alternative stories).We find that users prominently interacting with alternative information sources ? i.e. more exposed tounsubstantiated claims ? are more prone to interact with intentional and parodistic false claims.