Now Available: The Latest Edition of the “Coronavirus Misinformation Weekly Briefing” from the Oxford Internet Institute

From the Coronavirus Misinformation Weekly Briefing (via Computational Propaganda Project/OII):

Given the evolving nature of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic—and public understanding of the crises—we provide a weekly briefing about the spread of coronavirus information across multiple social media platforms.

For the week leading up to 11-05-2020 we find:

• Of all the junk news that social media users engaged with last week, 28% of it came from state-backed news agencies, and 91% of engagement with state backed agencies involves media outlets from Russia and China.
• In total, articles produced by junk health news sources were engaged with four million times this week. On average, articles from state-backed media sources nonetheless stimulated the most engagement.
• Thematically, prominent junk health news narratives this week included (1) intimations of virus origin from the Wuhan virology lab and (2) attacks on non-citizen status residents in the US through criticism of US Democratic Party proposals.

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