Now Available: A New Edition of the “Coronavirus Misinformation Weekly Briefing” from the Oxford Internet Institute (May 26, 2020)
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 26-05-2020 we find:
- Of all the junk news that social media users engaged with last week, 33% of it came from state-backed news agencies, and 96% 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 over five million times this week. On average, articles from state-backed media sources stimulated the most engagement.
- Thematically, this week’s critical theme was how both state-backed and junk news sources used their platforms to try and undermine democratic consent for the lockdown.
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3 pages; PDF.
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Filed under: News, Patrons and Users
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.