Abstract
The issue of fake news spread on social media especially during the pandemic of COVID-19 has become a major threat to various sectors and agencies in Malaysia. It is observed that the new norm that requires Malaysian to work and stay at home during Movement Control Order (MCO) has contributed to the rapid spread of the fake news. In this research, we study the impact of the fake news during the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia and how the number of COVID-19 positive cases in the country would affect the number of fake news being spread locally. We also conducted a correlation analysis between the number of fake news and the number of COVID-19 cases. Result shows a significant strong positive correlation between the two studied variables. Besides, we built a fake news prediction model using linear regression algorithm to predict the number of fake news based the number of COVID-19 cases. However, the model did not show a good performance. This paper is targeted to assist the government, especially Majlis Keselamatan Negara, during the formulation of action plan and decision making in the effort to hinder the spread of fake news, by implying the constructed formula to predict the number of fake news in a day based on the number of COVID-19 positive cases.
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