One in every 3 persons has seen misleading coronavirus news online, fake posts shared 1.7M times on Facebook
When the world found itself struggling hard against the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, the media of communication did not do them much of a favor. In fact, according to a new survey, roughly one out of three persons across countries like the US, Spain, Germany, UK, Argentina and South Korea have said that they witnessed false or misleading information on social media linked to the coronavirus that has claimed over 145,533 till now globally, as per the John Hopkins tracker.
The report, which was published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, came as tech giants Facebook and Google assured about clamping down on misinformation on their networks. The tech giants have also come under accusations that they are not doing enough to curb the spread of the misinformation that could risk people’s lives.
Avaaz, an international body that organizes demonstrations for progressive causes, reported that over 40 percent of the coronavirus-related misinformation on Facebook remained on the platform despite being debunked by partners of the social media giant’s own fact-checking program. It said such fake social media posts about the pandemic had been shared collectively on Facebook 1.7 million times in six languages.
The academics at Oxford, who polled over 8,500 people across the six mentioned nations in the last week of March and first days of April, said the efforts to curb misinformation on social media are yet to produce the desired results.
“The incentives that generate a lot of the misinformation are still there,” POLITICO quoted Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute and co-author of the study, as saying. He said nothing would solve the problem on its own and stressed on a “greater collaboration."
Spain, one of the worst-hit nations, and Argentina saw the highest levels of misinformation on social media with over 40 percent of those polled in each of those countries complained about some form of false information on the platforms. In Germany, a country that has a large number of confirmed cases but much lesser deaths compared to some of the West European nations, the percentage was 28.
In the UK, another country with surging cases, 38 percent of those covered said the same about false information while in the US, the worst-hit nation on the planet, 33 percent people were bashing false or misleading information.
What made things worse in the US is the level of political polarization that the respondents showed. While those harboring left-leaning political views were more confident about traditional media outlets, the right-leaning people displayed a bigger trust in the national government as the credible source of news.
80% Americans got at least some wrong reports about virus
Meanwhile, a study from the Pew Research Center also suggested that Americans had a poor understanding of the threats posed by the virus when the pandemic broke out. Most people, correctly or incorrectly, felt that they were fed wrong information by the media. The US saw a massive surge after the disease was declared to be a pandemic by the World Health Organization around mid-March and today, it has over 671,000 affected people and more than 33,000 dead.
The Pew survey included 8,914 adults and was carried out between March 10-16. It showed a whopping 80 percent of the respondents claiming that they had been exposed to at least some incorrect news reports about the virus (48 percent said they saw “a lot” or “some” fake news while 32 percent said they saw some but “not much”).
In late March, a Gallup poll showed the news media did the worst among institutions and leaders in the US when it came to responding to the virus. The news media got only 44 percent approval, the only party that got less than 50 percent support, while 55 percent disapproved of its role.