Prevalence of Low-Credibility Information on Twitter During the COVID-19 Outbreak

TL;DR

This study quantifies the spread of low-credibility COVID-19 information on Twitter, highlighting the significant role of social bots and human users in disseminating politicized content during the outbreak.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive estimate of low-credibility information volume and analyzes bot involvement in spreading misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Findings

Volume of low-credibility links comparable to major news outlets

Content is highly politicized and mainly spread via retweets

Social bots participate but humans generate most content

Abstract

As the novel coronavirus spreads across the world, concerns regarding the spreading of misinformation about it are also growing. Here we estimate the prevalence of links to low-credibility information on Twitter during the outbreak, and the role of bots in spreading these links. We find that the combined volume of tweets linking to low-credibility information is comparable to the volume of New York Times articles and CDC links. Content analysis reveals a politicization of the pandemic. The majority of this content spreads via retweets. Social bots are involved in both posting and amplifying low-credibility information, although the majority of volume is generated by likely humans. Some of these accounts appear to amplify low-credibility sources in a coordinated fashion.