Understanding Twitters behavior during the pandemic: Fake News and Fear

TL;DR

This study analyzes Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic to quantify fake news, measure public fear sentiment, and compare the spread of misinformation with the virus itself, highlighting social media's role in crisis communication.

Contribution

It provides an empirical analysis of fake news prevalence and fear sentiment on Twitter during COVID-19, and compares misinformation spread with virus transmission rates.

Findings

Significant presence of fake news on Twitter during the pandemic

Measurable levels of fear sentiment among the public

Correlation between fake news spread and virus transmission rates

Abstract

The outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has been accompanied by a large amount of misleading and false information about the virus, especially on social media. During the pandemic social media gained special interest as it went on to become an important medium of communication. This made the information being relayed on these platforms especially critical. In our work, we aim to explore the percentage of fake news being spread on Twitter as well as measure the sentiment of the public at the same time. We further study how the sentiment of fear is present among the public. In addition to that we compare the rate of spread of the virus per day with the rate of spread of fake news on Twitter. Our study is useful in establishing the role of Twitter, and social media, during a crisis, and more specifically during crisis management.