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 15 August 2022 and Monday 22 August 2022.
New:+6,120 Trend:-2,354
78,228 Fact-checking Tweets
New:+184 Trend:-85
4,227 Fact-checks
140 Fact-checking Organisations
Key Content and Provenance
During the period between Monday 15 August 2022 and Monday 22 August 2022, 6,120 new URLs have been identified as potential misinforming content. Out of the 249 domains identified by Fact-checking organisations (Figure 1), most of the new shared URLs were from facebook.com with an increase of +6,062 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 fullfact.org with a change of +37 compared to the previous total spread for the same domain whereas the domain that saw the least relative change was facebook.com with a change of -2,355 compared to the previous period.
The all time most important domain is facebook.com with a total of 502,253 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 140 fact-checking organisations.
The largest amount of fact-checked content comes from VoxCheck (350 fact-checks) and the least from Verify Sy (1 fact-checks). Most fact-checked content are from euvsdisinfo.eu (335) followed by LeadStories (255) and AFP fact checking (201) (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 | Country in eastern europe. | 201 | 264 | 152210 |
| Europe | Continent. | 62 | 67 | 35670 |
| Russia | Sovereign state in eastern europe and northern asia. | 50 | 82 | 24593 |
| Germany | Country in central europe. | 29 | 19 | 10839 |
| United Kingdom | Country in north-west europe. | 27 | 12 | 31035 |
| United States of America | Country located mainly in north america. | 21 | 84 | 34140 |
| Ankara 19 Mayıs Stadium | Football stadium in ankara. | 16 | 0 | 1163 |
| Lithuania | Country in europe. | 15 | 2 | 734 |
| Poland | Sovereign state in central europe. | 11 | 6 | 5126 |
| Turkey | Sovereign state spanning europe and asia. | 11 | 3 | 29916 |
Table 3: Top locations mentioned in misinforming posts.
| Person | Description | Current Week | Previous Week | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Volodymyr Zelenskyy | Sixth and current president of ukraine. | 65 | 20 | 52772 |
| Boris Johnson | Prime minister of the united kingdom since 2019. | 24 | 2 | 88 |
| Petro Poroshenko | President of ukraine from 2014 to 2019. | 24 | 1 | 720 |
| Oleksandr Turchynov | Ukrainian politician, screenwriter, and doctor of economic sciences. | 24 | 1 | 25 |
| Olexandr Kovaleko | Ukrainian military-political observer. | 16 | 0 | 1159 |
| Vladimir Putin | President of russia (1999–2008, 2012–present). | 14 | 43 | 58115 |
| Vadym Melnyk | Footballer. | 14 | 12 | 928 |
| Robert Habeck | German politician. | 6 | 0 | 234 |
| Ron Ben-Yishai | Israeli journalist. | 3 | 0 | 24364 |
| William Martin | English naturalist and palaeontologist. | 3 | 0 | 24364 |
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.