Social media was used to both spread misinformation and for fact-checking during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study which explores how individuals perceive and make sense of information they encounter during times of global crisis.Psychologists at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) carried out 24 semi-structured interviews with people aged 18–56 to understand how they made sense of and interacted with news they suspected to be fake.According to an Ofcom report commissioned in the first week of the UK lockdown, 49% of individuals used social media to access news and information about COVID-19, and 46% stated they had seen false or misleading information related to the pandemic.[…]
Source: Fake news and fact-checking: Study examines social media use during the pandemic | Phys.org