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 04 July 2022 and Monday 11 July 2022.
New:+183 Trend:-707
76,618 Fact-checking Tweets
New:+444 Trend:+117
3,813 Fact-checks
138 Fact-checking Organisations
Key Content and Provenance
During the period between Monday 04 July 2022 and Monday 11 July 2022, 183 new URLs have been identified as potential misinforming content. Out of the 227 domains identified by Fact-checking organisations (Figure 1), most of the new shared URLs were from knack.be with an increase of +144 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 knack.be with a change of +123 compared to the previous total spread for the same domain whereas the domain that saw the least relative change was dailystar.co.uk with a change of -438 compared to the previous period.
The all time most important domain is twitter.com with a total of 154,688 URL shares and the least popular domain is 24-post.com with 1 shares (Figure 2).
The top misinforming content and fact-checking articles shared since the last report are listed in Table 1 and Table 2.
Fact-Checkers and Spreaders Location
The data used for creating the Twitter dataset is obtained from 138 fact-checking organisations.
The largest amount of fact-checked content comes from euvsdisinfo.eu (295 fact-checks) and the least from Verify Sy (1 fact-checks). Most fact-checked content are from LeadStories (255) followed by AFP fact checking (199) and Factcheck.ge (138) (Figure 3).
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. | 318 | 234 | 144992 |
Belarus | Sovereign state in eastern europe. | 133 | 60 | 7036 |
Europe | Continent on earth, mainly on the northeastern quadrant, i.e. north-western eurasia. | 78 | 34 | 34458 |
Poland | Sovereign state in central europe. | 70 | 49 | 5279 |
Soviet Union | Federal socialist state in eastern europe and northern asia (1922–1991). | 70 | 16 | 8428 |
Lithuania | Sovereign state in northeastern europe. | 62 | 2 | 684 |
Baltic Sea | Sea in northern europe bounded by the scandinavian peninsula, the mainland of europe, and the danish islands. | 61 | 0 | 65 |
Kaliningrad | City in kaliningrad oblast, russia. | 61 | 0 | 61 |
United States of America | Sovereign state in north america. | 57 | 36 | 33797 |
Russia | Sovereign state in eastern europe and northern asia. | 44 | 57 | 23372 |
Person | Description | Current Week | Previous Week | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|
Vladimir Putin | 2nd and 4th president of russia. | 93 | 78 | 53943 |
Volodymyr Zelenskyy | Sixth and current president of ukraine. | 53 | 39 | 51820 |
Anthony Fauci | American immunologist and head of the u.s. National institute of allergy and infectious diseases. | 17 | 9 | 6586 |
Olaf Scholz | German politician, federal minister of finance and vice chancellor. | 13 | 16 | 59 |
Bill Clinton | 42nd president of the united states. | 9 | 7 | 933 |
Viktor Yanukovych | Ukrainian politician who was the president of ukraine. | 9 | 3 | 2128 |
President of the United States | Head of state and head of government of the united states of america. | 7 | 8 | 5772 |
Sergey Lavrov | Russian politician and foreign minister. | 6 | 3 | 463 |
Barack Obama | 44th president of the united states. | 6 | 3 | 354 |
Marjorie Taylor Greene | American politician and businesswoman from the state of georgia. | 6 | 3 | 169 |
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.
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.