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 23 May 2022 and Monday 30 May 2022.

174,408 Misinforming Tweets
New:+457 Trend:-7,641
74,611 Fact-checking Tweets
New:+543 Trend:-618
3,576 Fact-checks
135 Fact-checking Organisations

Key Content and Provenance

During the period between Monday 23 May 2022 and Monday 30 May 2022, 457 new URLs have been identified as potential misinforming content. Out of the 215 domains identified by Fact-checking organisations (Figure 1), most of the new shared URLs were from twitter.com with an increase of +209 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 15min.lt 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 bragazeta.ru with a change of +72 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 -7,713 compared to the previous period.

The all time most important domain is twitter.com with a total of 120,488 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://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1526185858411405312 LeadStories twitter.com 124 7440 7564
https://twitter.com/Ukraine66251776/status/1525655184210280449 LeadStories twitter.com 74 458 1054
https://www.bragazeta.ru/news/2022/05/26/stalo-izvestno-chto-banderovcy-gotovilis-sbrosit-atomnuyu-bombu-na-bryansk LeadStories bragazeta.ru 72 0 72
https://tass.com/russia/1457281 euvsdisinfo.eu tass.com 39 0 39
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1b-RKDHZOo LeadStories youtube.com 27 42 2391
https://ria.ru/20220523/zerno-1789808330.html euvsdisinfo.eu ria.ru 26 0 26
https://rumble.com/v10miez-world-premiere-watch-the-water.html LeadStories rumble.com 25 25 6426
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LQSYmda0Sc LeadStories youtube.com 16 15 8833
https://ukraina.ru/news/20220525/1034027657.html StopFake.org ukraina.ru 10 0 10
https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5367364 euvsdisinfo.eu kommersant.ru 9 0 9

Table 1: Top misinforming content.

Fact-check URL Domain Current Week Previous Week Total
https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.32AF9YN afp.com 56 0 56
https://www.stopfake.org/en/fake-zelensky-to-legalize-polish-seizure-of-ukraine/ stopfake.org 48 0 48
https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/2022/05/24/es-stimmt-nicht-dass-dieses-foto-us-admiral-eric-olson-in-mariupol-zeigt-zu-sehen-ist-ein-ukrainischer-soldat-in-luhansk/ correctiv.org 39 0 39
https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2022/05/fact-check-us-general-eric-olson-did-not-surrender-in-azovstal-ukraine-image-is-from-april-2022.html leadstories.com 25 88 113
https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.32B76JC afp.com 25 0 25
https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/2022/05/27/nein-tv-sender-haben-ein-veraltetes-raketenfoto-aus-der-ukraine-nicht-im-falschen-kontext-gezeigt/ correctiv.org 23 0 23
https://www.stopfake.org/en/fake-erdogan-says-turky-unwilling-to-get-involved-in-ukraine-show/ stopfake.org 21 0 21
https://faktencheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.32AB2BD afp.com 17 20 37
https://www.stopfake.org/en/fake-zaporizhzhia-rules-out-returning-to-kyiv-control/ stopfake.org 16 0 16
https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/2022/05/24/polen-es-gibt-keine-hinweise-dass-ukrainische-fluechtlinge-einen-mann-erstochen-haben/ correctiv.org 15 0 15

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. 1 4 4056
Poland Sovereign state in central europe. 0 2 37
Russia Sovereign state in eastern europe and northern asia. 0 0 3528
United States of America Sovereign state in north america. 0 0 3230
Moscow Capital and most populous city of russia. 0 0 3115
Japan Sovereign state in east asia, situated on an archipelago of five main and over 6,800 smaller islands. 0 0 409
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 0 154
Spain Sovereign state in southwestern europe with territories in the mediterranean sea, the atlantic ocean and northern africa. 0 0 154
Crimean Peninsula Peninsula on the northern coast of the black sea. 0 0 141

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. 1 2 297
Hunter Biden American lawyer, investment advisor, and second son of former vice president joe biden. 1 2 297
Joe Biden President-elect of the united states, former vice president (2009–2017). 1 2 297
Vladimir Putin 2nd and 4th president of russia. 0 2 13
Francis 266th pope of the catholic church. 0 2 6
Wang Wenbin Ming dynasty person cbdb = 260629. 0 0 3088
Volodymyr Zelenskyi 6th president of ukraine. 0 0 583
Ukraine Sovereign state in eastern europe. 0 0 409
Barack Obama 44th president of the united states. 0 0 134
Donald Trump Jr.  American businessman and son of u.s. President donald trump. 0 0 134

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.