A graph mining-based approach to analyze the dynamics of the Twitter community of COVID-19 misinformation disseminators

Abstract

This study explores the global problem of misinformation dissemination on social media, particularly Twitter, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It identifies prominent disseminators, investigates the spread of false information and the ecosystem of disinformation spreaders, and assesses their online personalities. We track the interaction among fake news spreaders using the User–User Interaction Graph. The study reveals a rapidly growing population of disseminators, including professional spreaders, with over 3% dominating the others. The collaboration among fake news spreaders is high, highlighting the need for further research using publicly available online data to understand the community spreading malicious misinformation about COVID-19.

Keywords

• COVID-19
• Fake news
• Community analysis
• Twitter
• Disseminator
• Misinformation