Monitoring and Understanding the Co-Spread of COVID-19 Misinformation and Fact-checks”. Using more than 3 years of data collected from Twitter and fact-checking organizations and a combination of spread variance analysis, impulse response modeling, and causal analysis, we will highlight the weak causal relationships between the spread of misinformation and fact-checks and discuss what topics are the less likely to be affected by fact-checks. We will also show how the proposed observatory can be used for tracking demographics, fact-checks, and topics over time.

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Monitoring and Understanding the
Co-Spread of COVID-19
Misinformation and Fact-checks
Grégoire Burel
Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, UK
Global Fact 9, Oslo, 22-25 June 2022

2. ► Does fact-checking impact misinformation spread?
► How misinformation and fact-checks? Spread for different topics and
demographics?
Misinformation and Fact-Checking
during COVID-19
We monitor and analyse the propagation of misinformation and
fact-checks on social media.
More than 16k fact-checks were
published during COVID-19
Misinformation still spreads
twice as much…*
*For fact-checked content. 2

3. Reporting and
Visualising
3
We create weekly reports about
the reach of misinforming posts
and their corresponding fact-
checks on Twitter.
- What misinformation
persists?
- What fact-checks spread
successfully?
Fact-checking
Observatory
Automatically generated
weekly reports on the
spread and impact of
fact-checks and
misinformation.
Understanding
2
We analyse if fact-checks impact
the spread of misinformation.
- Who spreads
misinformation/fact-checks?
- What topics are resistant to
fact-checking?
- Does fact-checking impacts
misinformation spread?
A large-scale study on
the effectiveness of
fact-checking across
topics, demographics
and time.
Monitoring
1
We track the spread of COVID-
19* misinformation and fact-
checks on Twitter using claim
reviews.
3
twitter
*We also track Russo-Ukrainian war misinformation.
A continuously
updated database of
misinformation and
fact-checked URL
mentions on Twitter.

4. Should all misinformation be fact-checked in the same way?
What is the relation between
misinformation and fact-
check spread?
5
1. Do misinformation and fact-checking
information spread similarly?
- Non-parametric MANOVA/ANOVA.
2. Does fact-checking spread affect the
diffusion of misinformation about Covid-
19?
- Weak causation analysis.
- Impulse response analysis and FEVD.
Who is most likely to spread misinformation / facts ?
Do fact-checks reduce misinformation spread?
7,370 Misinforming URLs
9,151 Fact-checking URLs
358,776 Tweets
Analysis on data
collected until
4th May 2020
Jan 2020 Apr 2020
Understanding
2

5. 6
Understanding
2
Vaccines
Symptoms
Spread
Other
Cures
Conspiracy
Theories
Causes
Authorities
Fact-check URLs
shares
Misinformation
URLs shares
Gender*
Male
Female
Account type
Non-org.
Org.
User Age
≥40
30-39
19-29
≤18
Topics and Demographics

6. ► Already fact-checked content re-spreading.
► Conspiracies and causes need to be addressed
differently than other topics.
► Fact-checkers republishing/reposting policy?
Global and topical spreading differences.
Initial onset period
until mid-March.
Late period from
mid-September.
Ramp-up period from
mid-March until mid-
September.
7
Jan 2020 Apr 2020 Jul 2020 Oct 2020 Jan 2120
2x more
misinform
ation.
Understanding
2
0 – 3 days
4 – 10 days
10+ days
initial
early
late
Global Topics
≠
“Converging”
behaviour.
=
≠
≠
≈/≠
=/≠
Period
Causes and conspiracies still spreading differently
in the late phase.

7. Short-term demographics differences.
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Individuals vs. Organisations Gender*
Understanding
2
- Individuals spread more misinformation
than organisations.
- Most organisation-driven spread occurs in
the initial period.
- Individual spread of misinformation
continuing over long periods.
Individuals exposure to fact-checked
content over long periods is key.
- Females spread less misinformation than
males (but represent 40% of Twitter
userbase)
- Misinformation spread is independent of
gender.
- Same spreading behaviour → ∞.
Gender is not important when dealing with
misinformation spread.

8. Fact-checking fast
spread response
Inconclusive
misinformation
response trend
Self initial response
(spread drop soon
after initial increase)
- Bidirectional weak causation between
misinformation and fact-checks spread.
- Fact-checking spread not clearly impacting
misinformation spread (impulse response and
FEVD).
- Fact-checks are quick to respond to
misinformation spread.
Weak impact of fact-checking
spread on misinformation spread.*
Understanding
2
9
► Make fact-checking content more sharable?
► Keep spreading fact-checks?
How to increase the impact/spread of fact-
checking content?
*globally for fact-checked content but not for all the topics..

9. Short term success in reducing misinformation spread. Hard to affect irrational misinformation spread.
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Virus Causes
Misinformation spread
increasingly dependent
on fact-checks spread
Fact-checking
spreading initially
independently
Fact-checking
initially affecting
misinformation.
Fast fact-
checking
response
Inconclusive
misinformation response
trend
Understanding
2
Conspiracy Theories

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Weekly Misinformation and Fact-checking Reports.
Reporting and Visualising
3

11. ► What misinformation keep spreading?
► What fact-check spreads the most?
Weekly automatically generated
reports on the spread of misinformation
and fact-checks that include:
1. Key content and topics.
2. Fact-checking coverage.
3. Demographic impact.
The Fact-checking
Observatory.
The weekly reports help identifying
the evolution of key topics and key
misinforming content.
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Reporting and Visualising
2

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Spread ratio Fact-checking delay
Topic spread
Fact-checker reports
Claim trend
Claim reports
Top spreaders
First/last spread
Most/least successful claims Associated claims/fact-checks
Demographic impact
Sharers locations
What’s next?
Reporting and Visualising
2
Spread evolution
What else?

13. ► Conspiracies and causes need to be addressed
differently than other topics.
Topic Co-Spread
► No need to target gender specifically.
► Targeting long individual exposure to
misinformation.
► Make fact-checking content more sharable?
► Keep spreading fact-checks?
Misinformation and fact-checking spread: What’s next?
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- Misinformation spreads more than fact-checks.
- Fact-checking is fast to spread initially in
response to misinformation spread.
- Weak bi-directional relation between fact-checks
and misinformation spread.
Demographic Co-Spread
Overall Misinformation and Fact-checking Spread
- Misinformation spreads independently from
gender.
- Individuals spread more misinformation over long
periods.
- Misinformation topics continue spreading over
long time periods .
- Fact-checking spread impact on individual topics
tend to be short-term.
What’s next?
- Making the FC observatory more useful to fact-
checkers .
- A social media bot for spreading fact-checks to
misinformation spreaders..

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Thank you.
Grégoire Burel.
@evhart
fcobservatory.org
g.burel@open.ac.uk
Monitoring and Understanding the Co-Spread of COVID-19
Misinformation and Fact-checks
Background illustrations: Myth busters created by Redgirl Lee for United Nations Global Call Out To Creatives.
github.com/evhart
W
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