The Fact-checking Observatory is an automatic service that collects misinforming content on Twitter using URLs that have been identified as potential misinformation by fact-checking websites. Using this data, the Fact-checking Observatory automatically generates weekly reports that updates the state of misinformation spread of fact-checked misinformation on Twitter.

This analysis is limited to URLs identified by Fact-checking organisations. The collected data only consist of non-blocked Twitter content and may be incomplete.

This report updates the status of misinformation spread between Monday 11 April 2022 and Monday 18 April 2022.

158,724 Misinforming Tweets
New:+8,383 Trend:-10,757
69,078 Fact-checking Tweets
New:+2,289 Trend:-669
3,576 Fact-checks
135 Fact-checking Organisations

Key Content and Provenance

During the period between Monday 11 April 2022 and Monday 18 April 2022, 8,383 new URLs have been identified as potential misinforming content. Out of the 199 domains identified by Fact-checking organisations (Figure 1), most of the new shared URLs were from rumble.com with an increase of +5,530 compared to the previous total spread for the same domain The domain that saw the least increase in spread compared to the previous period total spread was 24-post.com with a change of +0 compared to the previous total spread for the same domain

In relation to the previous week, the domain that saw the biggest relative spread change was rumble.com with a change of +5,530 compared to the previous total spread for the same domain whereas the domain that saw the least relative change was twitter.com with a change of -14,741 compared to the previous period.

The all time most important domain is twitter.com with a total of 109,154 URL shares and the least popular domain is 24-post.com with 1 shares (Figure 2).

Figure 1: Domain importance.

Figure 2: Amount of domains shares per week.

The top misinforming content and fact-checking articles shared since the last report are listed in Table 1 and Table 2.

Misinforming URL Fact-check URL Domain Current Week Previous Week Total
https://rumble.com/v10miez-world-premiere-watch-the-water.html LeadStories rumble.com 5530 0 5530
https://ria.ru/20220414/kreyser-1783626130.html LeadStories ria.ru 1482 0 1482
https://twitter.com/fratotolo2/status/1513799105398595584 Facta.news twitter.com 404 0 404
https://twitter.com/HenryJP5/status/1515336517773926405 dpa-factchecking.com twitter.com 170 0 170
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LQSYmda0Sc LeadStories youtube.com 149 2125 8355
https://ria.ru/20220417/biolaboratorii-1783801453.html Factcheck.ge ria.ru 139 0 139
https://ria.ru/20220411/s-300-1782852131.html StopFake.org ria.ru 98 0 98
https://www.facebook.com/100016841896737/posts/1148406602397392 Demagog facebook.com 74 0 74
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1b-RKDHZOo LeadStories youtube.com 64 302 2153
https://twitter.com/INFORATNIKSRB/status/1514466802381869056 Raskrinkavanje.ba twitter.com 61 0 61

Table 1: Top misinforming content.

Fact-check URL Domain Current Week Previous Week Total
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/apr/05/tweets/no-nato-allied-land-command-leader-wasnt-captured-/ politifact.com 306 535 841
https://www.stopfake.org/en/fake-serial-number-confirms-kramatorsk-train-station-hit-by-ukrainian-tochka-u-missile/ stopfake.org 205 0 205
https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.327R8KF afp.com 130 19 149
https://www.open.online/2022/04/13/bbc-attacco-kramatorsk-ucraini-video-falso/ open.online 120 0 120
https://factuel.afp.com/doc.afp.com.32848RC afp.com 119 0 119
https://www.indiatoday.in/fact-check/story/moskva-explosion-video-claims-false-1937965-2022-04-15 indiatoday.in 67 0 67
https://www.stopfake.org/en/international-media-regurgitating-old-fakes-about-the-azov-battalion-and-neo-nazism-in-ukraine/ stopfake.org 64 32 123
https://www.newtral.es/roger-cloutier-prisionero-rusia-mariupol/20220408/ newtral.es 57 19 76
https://maldita.es/malditobulo/20220408/maniqui-ucrania-rusia-cadaver-muerto/ maldita.es 52 7 59
https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/2022/04/12/nein-diese-dokumente-belegen-kein-geheimes-biowaffen-programm-in-der-ukraine/ correctiv.org 43 0 43

Table 2: Top fact-checked content.

Fact-Checkers and Spreaders Location

The data used for creating the Twitter dataset is obtained from 135 fact-checking organisations.

The largest amount of fact-checked content comes from euvsdisinfo.eu (262 fact-checks) and the least from Verificat (1 fact-checks). Most fact-checked content are from LeadStories (206) followed by AFP fact checking (188) and Factcheck.ge (138) (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Amount of fact-checks by fact-checkers.

Figure 4: Identified location of users spreading fact-checks and misinformation.

Locations and Mentions

Using automatic entity extraction methods, we identify key locations and persons mention in the fact-checking articles in order to identify what location and person are the most discussed in misinforming content.

The top mentioned locations and persons are listed in Table 3 and Table 4.

Location Description Current Week Previous Week Total
Ukraine Sovereign state in eastern europe. 3 9 3969
Russia Sovereign state in eastern europe and northern asia. 1 0 3489
United States of America Sovereign state in north america. 1 0 3195
Moscow Capital and most populous city of russia. 1 0 3081
Serbia Sovereign state in southeastern europe. 0 6 6
Japan Sovereign state in east asia, situated on an archipelago of five main and over 6,800 smaller islands. 0 0 408
Czech Republic Sovereign state in central europe. 0 0 167
Europe Continent on earth, mainly on the northeastern quadrant, i.e. north-western eurasia. 0 0 153
Spain Sovereign state in southwestern europe with territories in the mediterranean sea, the atlantic ocean and northern africa. 0 0 153
Central Asia Core region of the asian continent. 0 0 133

Table 3: Top locations mentioned in misinforming posts.

Person Description Current Week Previous Week Total
Donald Trump 45th and current president of the united states. 2 3 268
Hunter Biden American lawyer, investment advisor, and second son of former vice president joe biden. 2 3 268
Joe Biden President-elect of the united states, former vice president (2009–2017). 2 3 268
Wang Wenbin Ming dynasty person cbdb = 260629. 1 0 3061
Volodymyr Zelenskyi 6th president of ukraine. 0 0 581
Ukraine Sovereign state in eastern europe. 0 0 408
Barack Obama 44th president of the united states. 0 0 133
Donald Trump Jr.  American businessman and son of u.s. President donald trump. 0 0 133
Olena Zelenska Ukrainian architect and screenwriter. 0 0 18
Denys Shmyhal Ukrainian politician. 0 0 17

Table 4: Top people mentioned in misinforming posts.

Demographic Impact

Using automatic methods, Twitter account demographics are extracted for user age, gender and account type (i.e., identify if an account belong to an individual or organisation).

Figure 6 displays how misinformation and fact-checks are spread by different demographics.

Figure 5: Misinformation and Fact-check spread for different demographics. Top: Gender, Center: Age group, Bottom: Account type.

Data Collection and Methodology

The full methodology and information about the limitation and dataset used for this analysis can be accessed in the methodology page.