The characteristics of fake news on COVID-19 in Vietnam: the results of analysing the COVID- 19 fake news reflecting on Youth newspaper in 2020

Abstract

Objective: The paper focused on analyzing the content of the fake news on COVID-19 in the first wave of its appearing in Vietnam from Jan 2020 to May 2020. Methods: Quantitative content analysis and qualitative content analysis were applied for exploring the sample of the 68 pieces of news collected on the Youth newspaper (Tuoi tre) from Jan 2020 to May 2020 and only the reports/news on the cases and persons who had violated on communicating the fake news related to COVID-19 were selected for analysing. Findings: The result showed that fake news about COVID-19 appeared in all parts of the country and 26.5% of all collected fake news were reported in Ha Noi . The structure's forms of fake news were diverse but the most concentrated and common way to construct the fake news was the simplest way with just the basic untrue positive COVID- 19 cases (occupied for more than 51%). The proportion of female involving in delivering the fake news was about 2.5 times higher than male involving in it (63.2% compared to 26.5%). The result contributed partly to additional understanding on fake news which would provide some suggestions on the effective control of fake news and it should be included as a required part on communication program in in urgent medical situations or new epidemics in order to improve the effectiveness of disease control in the community. Key words: fake news, COVID-19, Youth newspaper, content analysis