Since the beginning of the pandemic, researchers at Princeton University started collecting and analyzing misinformation about COVID-19 and the pandemic from around the world. Understanding regional trends and looking at how misinformation spread across regions will help to combat false narratives.
Most of these stories appear to have been efforts to shape political debates. But a myriad of motivations likely prompted the misinformation we found—including people seeking ideological ends, political gain, and financial profit. An overwhelming majority—80 percent of the stories—were spread by individuals on social media such as Facebook and Twitter, while 17 percent were spread by media outlets and political figures.
It is often suggested that all politics is local; so is misinformation. Contrary to what one might expect from the globalized information environment, the salient themes in pandemic-related false narratives varied significantly across regions and countries; localized false narratives prevailed over global ones. When generating misinformation, social media users seemed to absorb a common set of COVID-19 background conditions and use them to falsify specific narratives to reflect local and regional realities.
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