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 13 June 2022 and Monday 20 June 2022.
New:+156 Trend:-526
75,504 Fact-checking Tweets
New:+310 Trend:-59
3,684 Fact-checks
136 Fact-checking Organisations
Key Content and Provenance
During the period between Monday 13 June 2022 and Monday 20 June 2022, 156 new URLs have been identified as potential misinforming content. Out of the 224 domains identified by Fact-checking organisations (Figure 1), most of the new shared URLs were from correctiv.org with an increase of +93 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 rumble.com with a change of +58 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 -224 compared to the previous period.
The all time most important domain is twitter.com with a total of 123,694 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.
Table 1: Top misinforming content.
Table 2: Top fact-checked content.
Fact-Checkers and Spreaders Location
The data used for creating the Twitter dataset is obtained from 136 fact-checking organisations.
The largest amount of fact-checked content comes from euvsdisinfo.eu (285 fact-checks) and the least from Verify Sy (1 fact-checks). Most fact-checked content are from LeadStories (224) followed by AFP fact checking (190) 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. | 305 | 599 | 143874 |
| Germany | Sovereign state in central europe. | 88 | 49 | 10326 |
| Russia | Sovereign state in eastern europe and northern asia. | 83 | 96 | 22921 |
| worldwide | Published or operating in multiple or all jurisdictions on earth; special value for “place of publication” (p291) and “operating area” (p2541). | 83 | 37 | 12867 |
| Americas | Landmass comprising the continents of north america and south america. | 72 | 14 | 6553 |
| Earth | Third planet from the sun in the solar system. | 61 | 107 | 20798 |
| United States of America | Sovereign state in north america. | 60 | 69 | 35868 |
| Soviet Union | Federal socialist state in eastern europe and northern asia (1922–1991). | 44 | 33 | 8366 |
| Donetsk | Capital city of donetsk oblast in estern ukraine. | 40 | 1 | 2005 |
| Europe | Continent on earth, mainly on the northeastern quadrant, i.e. north-western eurasia. | 19 | 46 | 34260 |
Table 3: Top locations mentioned in misinforming posts.
| Person | Description | Current Week | Previous Week | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthony Fauci | American immunologist and head of the u.s. National institute of allergy and infectious diseases. | 72 | 14 | 6541 |
| Vladimir Putin | 2nd and 4th president of russia. | 29 | 54 | 53426 |
| Volodymyr Zelenskyi | 6th president of ukraine. | 29 | 36 | 51637 |
| George Soros | Hungarian-american business magnate, investor and philanthropist. | 6 | 1 | 1933 |
| Joe Biden | President-elect of the united states, former vice president (2009–2017). | 5 | 36 | 4145 |
| Richard Nixon | 37th president of the united states of america (1913-1994). | 5 | 5 | 1677 |
| Filippa Lentzos | Researcher. | 5 | 5 | 1423 |
| Thomas Mettenleiter | German virologist. | 5 | 3 | 48 |
| Fatih Birol | Turkish economist. | 4 | 23 | 28 |
| Donald Trump | 45th and current president of the united states. | 4 | 2 | 1836 |
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.