COVID-19-related Fake News in Social Media

This study analyzes N=125 prominent fake news related to the COVID-19 pandemic spread in social media from 29 January to 11 April 2020. The five parameters of the analysis are themes, content types, sources, coverage, and intentions. First, the six major themes of fake news are health, religiopolitical, political, crime, entertainment, religious, and miscellaneous. Health-related fake news (67.2%) dominates the others. Second, the seven types of fake news contents have four main types: text, photo, audio and video, and three combined types: text & photo; text & video; and text & photo & video. More fake news takes the forms of text & video (47.2%), while the main types of content are less popular. Third, the two main sources of fake news are online media and mainstream media, where online-produced fake news (94.4%) prevails. Fourth, the main two types of coverages are international and national, and more fake news has an international connection (54.4%). Fifth, the intention of fake news has three types: positive, negative, and unknown. Most of the COVID-19-related fake news is negative (63.2%). Although fake news cases are unevenly distributed and repeatedly fluctuates during the period, a slow decrease of daily cases is noticed toward the end.