Dumitrescu Delia, Trpkovic Mina
Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2022 Mar 14;13:846250. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.846250. eCollection 2022.
While online disinformation practices have grown exponentially over the past decade, the COVID-19 pandemic provides arguably the best opportunity to date to study such communications at a cross-national level. Using the data provided by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), we examine the strategic uses of non-verbal and verbal arguments to push disinformation through social media and websites during the first wave of lockdowns in 2020 across 16 European countries. Our paper extends the work by Brennen et al. (2021) on the use of visuals in COVID-19 misinformation claims by investigating the use of facial emotional expressions and body pose depictions in conjunction with framing elements such as problems identified and attribution of responsibility in the construction of disinformation messages. Our European-wide comparative analysis of 174 messages indexed by the IFCN during the months of April and May 2020 helps provide a rounder understanding of the use of non-verbal devices in advancing COVID-19 disinformation across the continent, and can provide the basis for a framework for further study of the strategic use of non-verbal devices in COVID-19 disinformation world-wide.
在过去十年中，网络虚假信息传播呈指数级增长，而新冠疫情无疑为跨国层面研究此类传播提供了迄今为止最好的契机。利用国际事实核查网络（IFCN）提供的数据，我们研究了在2020年第一波封锁期间，非语言和语言论证在16个欧洲国家通过社交媒体和网站传播虚假信息时的策略性运用。我们的论文扩展了布伦南等人（2021年）关于新冠疫情虚假信息中视觉元素运用的研究，通过调查面部表情和身体姿势描绘与诸如虚假信息构建中所识别问题和责任归属等框架元素相结合的运用情况。我们对IFCN在2020年4月和5月索引的174条信息进行的全欧洲范围的比较分析，有助于更全面地理解非语言手段在整个欧洲传播新冠疫情虚假信息中的运用，并可为进一步研究非语言手段在全球新冠疫情虚假信息中的策略性运用提供框架基础。
