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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