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 22 August 2022 and Monday 29 August 2022.
New:+19,678 Trend:+13,558
78,316 Fact-checking Tweets
New:+88 Trend:-96
4,227 Fact-checks
140 Fact-checking Organisations
Key Content and Provenance
During the period between Monday 22 August 2022 and Monday 29 August 2022, 19,678 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 +19,639 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 facebook.com with a change of +13,577 compared to the previous total spread for the same domain whereas the domain that saw the least relative change was stopfake.org with a change of -63 compared to the previous period.
The all time most important domain is facebook.com with a total of 521,892 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. | 79 | 201 | 152289 |
| Russia | Sovereign state in eastern europe and northern asia. | 39 | 50 | 24632 |
| United States of America | Country located mainly in north america. | 14 | 21 | 34154 |
| Europe | Continent. | 13 | 62 | 35683 |
| Germany | Country in central europe. | 12 | 29 | 10851 |
| Mariupol | City in donetsk oblast in southeastern ukraine. | 10 | 0 | 1816 |
| Moscow | Capital and most populous city of russia. | 8 | 4 | 10672 |
| Luhansk Oblast | Administrative division (oblast) in eastern ukraine. | 7 | 0 | 2143 |
| Turkey | Sovereign state spanning europe and asia. | 4 | 11 | 29920 |
| Belarus | Sovereign state in eastern europe. | 4 | 10 | 6704 |
Table 3: Top locations mentioned in misinforming posts.
| Person | Description | Current Week | Previous Week | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Volodymyr Zelenskyy | Sixth and current president of ukraine. | 11 | 65 | 52783 |
| Vladimir Putin | President of russia (1999–2008, 2012–present). | 10 | 14 | 58125 |
| French | Citizens or residents of france. | 5 | 0 | 914 |
| Vadym Melnyk | Footballer. | 4 | 14 | 932 |
| Joe Biden | President of the united states since 2021. | 4 | 1 | 4951 |
| Donald Trump | President of the united states from 2017 to 2021. | 4 | 1 | 1904 |
| Viktor Yanukovych | Ukrainian politician who was the president of ukraine. | 4 | 0 | 2229 |
| Hunter Biden | American lawyer, investment advisor, and second son of former vice president joe biden. | 3 | 1 | 399 |
| Anthony Fauci | American immunologist and head of the u.s. National institute of allergy and infectious diseases. | 2 | 0 | 6650 |
| Alexei Navalny | Russian lawyer, politician and anti-corruption activist. | 2 | 0 | 23 |
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.