Aimei Yang, Jieun Shin, Alvin Zhou, Ke M. Huang-Isherwood, Eugene Lee, Chuqing Dong, Hye Min Kim, Yafei Zhang, Jingyi Sun, Yiqi Li, Yuanfeixue Nan, Lichen Zhen and Wenlin Liu
Source
Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review
DOI: 10.37016/mr-2020-78
Essay Summary
Our study examines Facebook posts containing nine prominent COVID-19 vaccine misinformation topics that circulated on the platform between March 1st, 2020 and March 1st, 2021. We first identify misinformation spreaders and fact checkers,1 further dividing the latter group into those who repeat misinformation to debunk the false claim and those who share correct information without repeating the misinformation. In particular, fact checkers’ posts that repeat the original misinformation received significantly more comments than posts from misinformation spreaders. However, we found that misinformation spreaders were far more likely to take on central positions in the misinformation URL co-sharing network than fact checkers. This demonstrates the remarkable ability of misinformation spreaders to coordinate communication strategies across topics.
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.
