Mis/disinformation on COVID-19 in Social Media Narratives in Nigeria and Iraq: An Exploratory Investigation of their Linguistic Features from Pragmatic Perspectives (original) (raw)
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Linguistic drivers of misinformation diffusion on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic
Italian Journal of Marketing, 2021
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedent amounts of fake news and hoax spread on social media. In particular, conspiracy theories argued on the effect of specific new technologies like 5G and misinformation tarnished the reputation of brands like Huawei. Language plays a crucial role in understanding the motivational determinants of social media users in sharing misinformation, as people extract meaning from information based on their discursive resources and their skillset. In this paper, we analyze textual and non-textual cues from a panel of 4923 tweets containing the hashtags #5G and #Huawei during the first week of May 2020, when several countries were still adopting lockdown measures, to determine whether or not a tweet is retweeted and, if so, how much it is retweeted. Overall, through traditional logistic regression and machine learning, we found different effects of the textual and non-textual cues on the retweeting of a tweet and on its ability to accumulate retwe...
JMIR infodemiology, 2022
Background: The word "infodemic" refers to the deluge of false information about an event, and it is a global challenge for today's society. The sheer volume of misinformation circulating during the COVID-19 pandemic has been harmful to people around the world. Therefore, it is important to study different aspects of misinformation related to the pandemic. Objective: This paper aimed to identify the main subthemes related to COVID-19 misinformation on various platforms, from traditional outlets to social media. This paper aimed to place these subthemes into categories, track the changes, and explore patterns in prevalence, over time, across different platforms and contexts. Methods: From a theoretical perspective, this research was rooted in framing theory; it also employed thematic analysis to identify the main themes and subthemes related to COVID-19 misinformation. The data were collected from 8 fact-checking websites that formed a sample of 127 pieces of false COVID-19 news published from January 1, 2020 to March 30, 2020. Results: The findings revealed 4 main themes (attribution, impact, protection and solutions, and politics) and 19 unique subthemes within those themes related to COVID-19 misinformation. Governmental and political organizations (institutional level) and administrators and politicians (individual level) were the 2 most frequent subthemes, followed by origination and source, home remedies, fake statistics, treatments, drugs, and pseudoscience, among others. Results indicate that the prevalence of misinformation subthemes had altered over time between January 2020 and March 2020. For instance, false stories about the origin and source of the virus were frequent initially (January). Misinformation regarding home remedies became a prominent subtheme in the middle (February), while false information related to government organizations and politicians became popular later (March). Although conspiracy theory web pages and social media outlets were the primary sources of misinformation, surprisingly, results revealed trusted platforms such as official government outlets and news organizations were also avenues for creating COVID-19 misinformation. Conclusions: The identified themes in this study reflect some of the information attitudes and behaviors, such as denial, uncertainty, consequences, and solution-seeking, that provided rich information grounds to create different types of misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some themes also indicate that the application of effective communication strategies and the creation of timely content were used to persuade human minds with false stories in different phases of the crisis. The findings of this study can be beneficial for communication officers, information professionals, and policy makers to combat misinformation in future global health crises or related events.
Linguistics and Literature Review , 2020
This study aims to explore the most common misinformation topics about COVID-19, people's perceptions concerning disinformation, and its consequences. A purposive sample of 50 posts and thousands of comments on coronavirus was drawn from social media networking sites. The data were also collected through informal interviews of 30 participants of different demographic backgrounds. The selected data were analyzed as dialogic communicative content between the participants. The study reveals that the most common topics regarding coronavirus misinformation are about cure and conspiracy theories. The participants have shown a mixed response towards the misinformation. The study has concluded the severe consequences of misinformation concerning the virus. Hence, I would like to recommend compulsory social media education for the internet users regarding how to respond to such a crisis while abiding by the Internet regulations.
Online Media and Global Communication
Purpose In light of the fact that people have more opportunities to encounter scientific misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, this research aimed to examine how different types of misinformation impact readers’ evaluations of messages and to identify the mechanisms (motivated reasoning hypothesis vs. classical reasoning theory) underlying those evaluations of message inaccuracy and fakeness. Design/methodology/approach This research employed data from an online experiment conducted in Hong Kong in March 2022, when the fifth COVID-19 wave peaked. The data were collected using quota sampling established by age based on census data (N = 835). Findings In general, the participants were not able to discern manipulated content from misinterpreted content. When given a counter-attitudinal message, those who read a message with research findings as supporting evidence rated the message as being more inaccurate and fake than those who read the same message but with quotes as sup...
Characterizing and Comparing COVID-19 Misinformation Across Languages, Countries and Platforms
arXiv (Cornell University), 2020
Misinformation/disinformation about COVID-19 has been rampant on social media around the world. In this study, we investigate COVID-19 misinformation/ disinformation on social media in multiple languages/countries: Chinese (Mandarin)/China, English/USA, and Farsi (Persian)/Iran; and on multiple platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Weibo, WeChat and TikTok. Misinformation, especially about a global pandemic, is a global problem yet it is common for studies of COVID-19 misinformation on social media to focus on a single language, like English, a single country, like the USA, or a single platform, like Twitter. We utilized opportunistic sampling to compile 200 specific items of viral and yet debunked misinformation across these languages, countries and platforms emerged between January 1 and August 31. We then categorized this collection based both on the topics of the misinformation and the underlying roots of that misinformation. Our multi-cultural and multilinguistic team observed that the nature of COVID-19 misinformation on social media varied in substantial ways across different languages/countries depending on the cultures, beliefs/religions, popularity of social media, types of platforms, freedom of speech and the power of people versus governments. We observe that politics is at the root of most of the collected misinformation across all three languages in this dataset. We further observe the different impact of government restrictions on platforms and platform restrictions on content in China, Iran, and the USA and their impact on a key question of our age: how do we control misinformation without silencing the voices we need to hold governments accountable?
Developing Fake News Immunity: Fallacies as Misinformation Triggers During the Pandemic
Musi, E., Aloumpi, M., Carmi, E., Yates, S., & O’Halloran, K. (2022). Developing Fake News Immunity: Fallacies as Misinformation Triggers During the Pandemic. Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 12(3), e202217, 2022
Misinformation constitutes one of the main challenges to counter the infodemic: misleading news, even if not blatantly false, can cause harm especially in crisis scenarios such as the pandemic. Due to the fast proliferation of information across digital media, human fact-checkers struggle to keep up with fake news, while automatic fact-checkers are not able to identify the grey area of misinformation. We, thus, propose to reverse engineer the manipulation of information offering citizens the means to become their own fact-checkers through digital literacy and critical thinking. Through a corpus analysis of fact-checked news about COVID-19, we identify 10 fallacies-arguments which seem valid but are not-that systematically trigger misinformation and offer a systematic procedure to identify them. Next to fallacies, we examine the types of sources associated to (mis-/dis-)information in our dataset as well as the type of claims making up the headlines. The statistical patterns surfaced from these three levels of analysis reveal a misinformation ecosystem where no source type is exempt from flawed arguments with frequent evading the burden of proof and cherry picking behaviors, even when descriptive claims are at stake. In such a scenario, exercising the audience's critical skills through fallacy and semantic analysis is necessary to guarantee fake news immunity.
Journal of Computational Social Science
Misinformation in the media is produced by hard-to-gauge thought mechanisms employed by individuals or collectivities. In this paper, we shed light on what the country-specific factors of falsehood production in the context of COVID-19 Pandemic might be. Collecting our evidence from the largest misinformation dataset used in the COVID-19 misinformation literature with close to 11,000 pieces of falsehood, we explore patterns of misinformation production by employing a variety of methodological tools including algorithms for text similarity, clustering, network distances, and other statistical tools. Covering news produced in a span of more than 14 months, our paper also differentiates itself by its use of carefully controlled hand-labeling of topics of falsehood. Findings suggest that country-level factors do not provide the strongest support for predicting outcomes of falsehood, except for one phenomenon: in countries with serious press freedom problems and low human development, the mostly unknown authors of misinformation tend to focus on similar content. In addition, the intensity of discussion on animals, predictions and symptoms as part of fake news is the biggest differentiator between nations; whereas news on conspiracies, medical equipment and risk factors offer the least explanation to differentiate. Based on those findings, we discuss some distinct public health and communication strategies to dispel misinformation in countries with particular characteristics. We also emphasize that a global action plan against misinformation is needed given the highly globalized nature of the online media environment.
Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 2021
During COVID-19, misinformation on social media affects people's adoption of appropriate prevention behaviors. It is urgent to suppress the misinformation to prevent negative public health consequences. Although an array of studies has proposed misinformation suppression strategies, few have investigated the role of predominant credible information during crises. None has examined its effect quantitatively using longitudinal social media data. Therefore, this research investigates the temporal correlations between credible information and misinformation, and whether predominant credible information can suppress misinformation for two prevention measures (i.e. topics), i.e. wearing masks and social distancing using tweets collected from February 15 to June 30, 2020. We trained Support Vector Machine classifiers to retrieve relevant tweets and classify tweets containing credible information and misinformation for each topic. Based on cross-correlation analyses of credible and misinformation time series for both topics, we find that the previously predominant credible information can lead to the decrease of misinformation (i.e. suppression) with a time lag. The research findings provide empirical evidence for suppressing misinformation with credible information in complex online environments and suggest practical strategies for future information management during crises and emergencies.
The concepts of fake news and rumors in communication are not new. The practice of spreading propaganda for the benefit of the dominant has been around us for several centuries with the rise of societies and power structures. But the mediums through which they are spread have changed over the years. The oral mode has given way to media and the cyber world. All social media platforms are participating in this process. As information is power, that is why every individual using social media platforms is powerful in his/her domain. This power becomes a menace when the information is manipulated from the source. The destructive power of this phenomenon is evident in this COVID-19 scenario as well. The modes of communication are being distorted and as a result, the information is becoming beyond recognition by common people. Here the manipulation is not only caused by the governments and their ideologies as stated by Louis Althusser, but also by a group of cybercriminals. Amidst this pandemic situation, sound information is the key to restrain the panic and confusion of the masses. WHO's Director-General Dr. Tedros has said that miss information causes confusion and spreads fear. It hampers the response towards the outbreak. The COVID-19 pandemic remains a silent example of how social media has bred a multitude of falsehoods. In the first few months of 2020, information and news reports about coronavirus (COVID19) disease were rapidly published on social media and social marketing sites throughout the internet. In this pandemic situation, there are thousands of people who are spreading information, rumors, and misinformation making it critical for the governments to control. At the same time, it continues to harm the mental health of every individual. The paper aims to analyze the causes and effects of the spreading of fake news and misinformation.
Illusion of Truth: Analysing and Classifying COVID-19 Fake News in Brazilian Portuguese Language
Big Data and Cognitive Computing
Public health interventions to counter the COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated and increased digital adoption and use of the Internet for sourcing health information. Unfortunately, there is evidence to suggest that it has also accelerated and increased the spread of false information relating to COVID-19. The consequences of misinformation, disinformation and misinterpretation of health information can interfere with attempts to curb the virus, delay or result in failure to seek or continue legitimate medical treatment and adherence to vaccination, as well as interfere with sound public health policy and attempts to disseminate public health messages. While there is a significant body of literature, datasets and tools to support countermeasures against the spread of false information online in resource-rich languages such as English and Chinese, there are few such resources to support Portuguese, and Brazilian Portuguese specifically. In this study, we explore the use of machine lea...