research-article

Characterizing and Comparing COVID-19 Misinformation Across Languages, Countries and Platforms

Authors:

Golshan Madraki,

Isabella Grasso,

Jacqueline M. Otala,

Jeanna MatthewsAuthors Info & Claims

WWW '21: Companion Proceedings of the Web Conference 2021

Pages 213 - 223

https://doi.org/10.1145/3442442.3452304

Published: 03 June 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Misinformation/disinformation about COVID-19 has been rampant on social media around the world. In this study, we investigate COVID-19 misinformation/ disinformation on social media in multiple languages/countries: Chinese (Mandarin)/China, English/USA, and Farsi (Persian)/Iran; and on multiple platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Weibo, WeChat and TikTok. Misinformation, especially about a global pandemic, is a global problem yet it is common for studies of COVID-19 misinformation on social media to focus on a single language, like English, a single country, like the USA, or a single platform, like Twitter. We utilized opportunistic sampling to compile 200 specific items of viral and yet debunked misinformation across these languages, countries and platforms emerged between January 1 and August 31. We then categorized this collection based both on the topics of the misinformation and the underlying roots of that misinformation. Our multi-cultural and multi-linguistic team observed that the nature of COVID-19 misinformation on social media varied in substantial ways across different languages/countries depending on the cultures, beliefs/religions, popularity of social media, types of platforms, freedom of speech and the power of people versus governments. We observe that politics is at the root of most of the collected misinformation across all three languages in this dataset. We further observe the different impact of government restrictions on platforms and platform restrictions on content in China, Iran, and the USA and their impact on a key question of our age: how do we control misinformation without silencing the voices we need to hold governments accountable?

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cover image ACM Conferences

WWW '21: Companion Proceedings of the Web Conference 2021

April 2021

726 pages

ISBN:9781450383134

DOI:10.1145/3442442

Editors:
Jure Leskovec
Stanford
,
Marko Grobelnik
Jožef Stefan Institute
,
Marc Najork
Google
,
Jie Tang
Tsinghua University
,
Leila Zia
Wikimedia Foundation

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Published: 03 June 2021

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Cited By

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https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241269283
Godinez LMustafaraj E(2024)YouTube and Conspiracy Theories: A Longitudinal Audit of Information PanelsProceedings of the 35th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media10.1145/3648188.3675128(273-284)Online publication date: 10-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3648188.3675128
Tang HLenzini GGreiff SRohles BSergeeva A(2024)“Who Knows? Maybe it Really Works”: Analysing Users' Perceptions of Health Misinformation on Social MediaProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661510(1499-1517)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
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