The battleground of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on Facebook: Fact checkers vs. misinformation spreaders

Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review

Yuanfeixue Nan¹  Ke M. Huang-Isherwood¹  Eugene Lee¹  Lichen Zhen¹  Hye Min Kim¹  Aimei Yang¹  Alvin Zhou²  Chuqing Dong³  Jieun Shin⁴  Wenlin Liu⁵  Yafei Zhang⁶  Jingyi Sun⁷  Yiqi Li⁸ 

[1] Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, USA;Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, USA;Department of Advertising + Public Relations, Michigan State University, USA;Department of Media Production, Management, and Technology, University of Florida, USA;Jack J. Valenti School of Communication, University of Houston, USA;Paul and Virginia Engler College of Business, West Texas A&M University, USA;School of Business, Stevens Institute of Technology, USA;School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, USA;

关键词: covid-19;    facebook;    fact-checking;    vaccines;   

DOI  :  10.37016/mr-2020-78

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Our study examines Facebook posts containing nine prominent COVID-19 vaccine misinformation topics that circulated on the platform between March 1, 2020, and March 1, 2021. We first identify misinformation spreaders and fact checkers, 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. Our analysis shows that, on Facebook, there are almost as many fact checkers as misinformation spreaders. 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.

【 授权许可】

Unknown