Given the evolving nature of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic—and public understanding of the crises—we provide a weekly briefing about the spread of coronavirus information across multiple social media platforms.
Key highlights this week:
[…]
- Of all the junk news that social media users engaged with last week, one third of it came from state-backed news agencies, and 98% of English language engagement with state backed agencies involves media outlets from Russia and China.
- Content from state-backed sources is distributed to hundreds of millions of social media accounts; among mainstream media outlets only the New York Times had a social distribution network on par with that of state-backed media.
Source: Coronavirus Misinformation Weekly Briefing 04-05-2020 | Oxford Internet Institute