Boyacı Yıldırım Merve
Department of Public Relations and Publicity Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences, Istanbul Gelisim University Istanbul Turkey.
J Public Aff. 2022 Nov 30:e2846. doi: 10.1002/pa.2846.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many rumors and conspiracy theories spread in various media outlets. The purpose of this study is to reveal the nature of the misinformation detected by fact check platforms that spread in the Fragile Five countries. To determine the themes of misinformation about COVID-19 and from which media it is disseminated are a possible way to prevent it. The data of the study were obtained from International Fact-checking Network's CoronaVirusFacts database. One thousand seven hundred thirty-four piece of misinformation collected by web scraping method during the period January 24, 2020 to November 14, 2020 and analyzed with MAXQDA Analytics Pro 2020. As a result of the research, it was found that rumors (96.3%) spread more in the Fragile Five countries than conspiracy theories (3.7%). While the main theme of the rumors is about illness (26.9%) and diagnosis-treatment (25%), conspiracy theories are mostly related to the cause of the disease (68.8%). 53.06% of misinformation was spread through the Facebook platform. 15.32% on Twitter; 13.34% on WhatsApp. Misinformation has been heavily false (85.12%) in both rumor and conspiracy theories. In the second place, misleading (10.09%) news spread.
在新冠疫情期间，许多谣言和阴谋论在各种媒体上传播。本研究的目的是揭示在“脆弱五国”传播的、由事实核查平台检测到的错误信息的本质。确定关于新冠疫情的错误信息主题以及其传播的媒体渠道是预防此类信息传播的一种可能途径。本研究的数据来自国际事实核查网络的“冠状病毒事实”数据库。通过网络抓取方法收集了2020年1月24日至2020年11月14日期间的1734条错误信息，并使用MAXQDA Analytics Pro 2020进行分析。研究结果发现，在“脆弱五国”，谣言（96.3%）比阴谋论（3.7%）传播得更多。谣言的主要主题是关于疾病（26.9%）和诊断治疗（25%），而阴谋论大多与疾病成因相关（68.8%）。53.06%的错误信息通过脸书平台传播。15.32%通过推特传播；13.34%通过WhatsApp传播。在谣言和阴谋论中，错误信息大多是完全错误的（85.12%）。其次是误导性（10.09%）新闻的传播。
