Source: Weekly Misinformation Briefing (9/22/20 via COMPROP)
We provide a weekly briefing about the spread of misinformation across multiple social media platforms.
For the seven days prior to 17-09-2020 we find:
The social media distribution network of all articles from the top fifteen mainstream news outlets reached over three billion social media users this week, achieving much greater distribution than state-backed and junk news sources. But the average article from state-backed sources reached over 8,700 users, while the average article from mainstream sources reached over 4,700 users and the average junk health article reached over 2,580 users.
Similarly, aggregate content from mainstream sources gets the largest amount of total user engagement. However, on a per article basis, state-backed news receives over 600 engagements and junk news receives over 1450,while average articles from mainstream sources get just over 300 engagements.
The most prominent junk news and state-backed topics, in descending order, include misinformation about police shootings, the Israel-Bahrain diplomatic deal, the recovery of the Chinese economy, and general 2020 US election campaign news.
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.
