Disinformation and Misinformation on Twitter during the Novel Coronavirus Outbreak

TL;DR

This study analyzes 67 million COVID-19 related tweets to understand the spread of disinformation, revealing that regular users significantly contribute to influential fake news dissemination within countries.

Contribution

The paper provides a large-scale analysis of COVID-19 misinformation on Twitter, highlighting user roles and the domestic spread of fake news during the pandemic.

Findings

Regular users are key spreaders of influential fake news.

Fake news tweets are more likely to be retweeted domestically.

Influential tweets are often posted by news media, officials, and reporters.

Abstract

As the novel coronavirus spread globally, a growing public panic was expressed over the internet. We examine the public discussion concerning COVID-19 on Twitter. We use a dataset of 67 million tweets from 12 million users collected between January 29, 2020 and March 4, 2020. We categorize users based on their home countries, social identities, and political orientation. We find that news media, government officials, and individual news reporters posted a majority of influential tweets, while the most influential ones are still written by regular users. Tweets mentioning "fake news" URLs and disinformation story-lines are also more likely to be spread by regular users. Unlike real news and normal tweets, tweets containing URLs pointing to "fake news" sites are most likely to be retweeted within the source country and so are less likely to spread internationally.