An Exploratory Analysis of COVID Bot vs Human Disinformation Dissemination stemming from the Disinformation Dozen on Telegram

TL;DR

This study analyzes how the Disinformation Dozen, bots, and humans spread COVID-19 disinformation on Telegram, revealing distinct roles and activity patterns in the dissemination process.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of disinformation spread by key actors on Telegram, highlighting the roles of the Disinformation Dozen, bots, and humans during the pandemic.

Findings

Disinformation Dozen initiate disinformation dissemination.

Bots are highly active in conversation threads.

Humans actively propagate information through forwarding.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2021 led to a worldwide health crisis that was accompanied by an infodemic. A group of 12 social media personalities, dubbed the ``Disinformation Dozen", were identified as key in spreading disinformation regarding the COVID-19 virus, treatments, and vaccines. This study focuses on the spread of disinformation propagated by this group on Telegram, a mobile messaging and social media platform. After segregating users into three groups -- the Disinformation Dozen, bots, and humans --, we perform an investigation with a dataset of Telegram messages from January to June 2023, comparatively analyzing temporal, topical, and network features. We observe that the Disinformation Dozen are highly involved in the initial dissemination of disinformation but are not the main drivers of the propagation of disinformation. Bot users are extremely active in conversation threads, while human users are active propagators of information, disseminating posts between Telegram channels through the forwarding mechanism.