Analyzing Misinformation Claims During the 2022 Brazilian General Election on WhatsApp, Twitter, and Kwai

TL;DR

This study examines misinformation during the 2022 Brazilian election across WhatsApp, Twitter, and Kwai, revealing platform-specific claim characteristics and highlighting challenges in cross-platform claim matching algorithms.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of misinformation claims across multiple platforms during an election, and identifies limitations in current claim matching algorithms.

Findings

Unique misinformation claims on each platform

Claims differ in format, detail, and length across platforms

Current algorithms struggle to match claims across different media formats

Abstract

This study analyzes misinformation from WhatsApp, Twitter, and Kwai during the 2022 Brazilian general election. Given the democratic importance of accurate information during elections, multiple fact-checking organizations collaborated to identify and respond to misinformation via WhatsApp tiplines and power a fact-checking feature within a chatbot operated by Brazil's election authority, the TSE. WhatsApp is installed on over 99% of smartphones in Brazil, and the TSE chatbot was used by millions of citizens in the run-up to the elections. During the same period, we collected social media data from Twitter (now X) and Kwai (a popular video-sharing app similar to TikTok). Using the WhatsApp, Kwai, and Twitter data along with fact-checks from three Brazilian fact-checking organizations, we find unique claims on each platform. Even when the same claims are present on different platforms, they often differ in format, detail, length, or other characteristics. Our research highlights the limitations of current claim matching algorithms to match claims across platforms with such differences and identifies areas for further algorithmic development. Finally, we perform a descriptive analysis examining the formats (image, video, audio, text) and content themes of popular misinformation claims.