Abstract
Since the Coronavirus health emergency was declared, many are the fake news that have circulated around this topic, including rumours, conspiracy theories and myths. According to the World Economic Forum, fake news is one of the threats in today's societies, since this type of information circulates fast and is often inaccurate and misleading. Moreover, fake-news are far more shared than evidence-based news among social media users and thus, this can potentially lead to decisions that do not consider the individual’s best interest. Drawing from this evidence, the present study aims at comparing the type of Tweets and Sina Weibo posts regarding COVID-19 that contain either false or scientific veracious information. To that end 1923 messages from each social media were retrieved, classified and compared. Results show that there is more false news published and shared on Twitter than in Sina Weibo, at the same time science-based evidence is more shared on Twitter than in Weibo but less than false news. This stresses the need to find effective practices to limit the circulation of false information.
Highlights
Since the Coronavirus health emergency was declared, many are the fake news that have circulated around this topic, including rumors, conspiracy theories and myths
Drawing from this evidence, the present study aims at comparing the type of tweets and Sina Weibo posts regarding COVID-19 that contain either false or scientific veracious information from February 6 and 7 of 2020
Considering the difference between both networks, and the infodemic situation flagged by World Health Organization (WHO), the present paper aims at shedding new light on the circulation of fake-news and science-based information in these two social media platforms, Twitter & Sina Weibo
Summary
Since the Coronavirus health emergency was declared, many are the fake news that have circulated around this topic, including rumors, conspiracy theories and myths. The World Economic Forum made such a remark in 2013 in a report entitled “Digital wildfires in a hyperconnected world” (Howel, 2013) This fact is of special concern when false information refers to health since the behavior of misinformed citizens, practitioners or public leaders can have severe consequences for public health (Scheufele & Krause, 2019). In this scenario, the present paper aims at exploring and comparing how false information and science-based information circulated on Twitter and Sinia Weibo, two social media platforms, over a two-day period during the coronavirus disease outbreak, 6 and 7 February of 2020
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