Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review (Aug 2021)

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

  • 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,
  • Wenlin Liu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-78
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2, no. 4

Abstract

Read online

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.

Keywords