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 29 August 2022 and Monday 05 September 2022.
New:+31,532 Trend:-5,517
78,654 Fact-checking Tweets
New:+144 Trend:-41
4,366 Fact-checks
140 Fact-checking Organisations
Key Content and Provenance
During the period between Monday 29 August 2022 and Monday 05 September 2022, 31,532 new URLs have been identified as potential misinforming content. Out of the 254 domains identified by Fact-checking organisations (Figure 1), most of the new shared URLs were from facebook.com with an increase of +31,466 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 NA.NA with a change of +15 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 -5,447 compared to the previous period.
The all time most important domain is facebook.com with a total of 649,533 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 euvsdisinfo.eu (388 fact-checks) and the least from Verify Sy (1 fact-checks). Most fact-checked content are from VoxCheck (350) followed by LeadStories (255) and AFP fact checking (207) (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. | 123 | 162 | 151200 |
| United States of America | Country located mainly in north america. | 29 | 66 | 34290 |
| Russia | Sovereign state in eastern europe and northern asia. | 21 | 49 | 24931 |
| Germany | Country in central europe. | 19 | 45 | 14413 |
| France | Sovereign state with mainland in western europe and several overseas territories. | 15 | 15 | 3184 |
| Europe | Continent. | 10 | 48 | 35972 |
| Poland | Sovereign state in central europe. | 10 | 20 | 5144 |
| United Kingdom | Country in north-west europe. | 8 | 24 | 31078 |
| Moscow | Capital and most populous city of russia. | 8 | 15 | 10705 |
| Turkey | Sovereign state spanning europe and asia. | 8 | 13 | 30012 |
Table 3: Top locations mentioned in misinforming posts.
| Person | Description | Current Week | Previous Week | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Volodymyr Zelenskyy | Sixth and current president of ukraine. | 31 | 32 | 52047 |
| Vladimir Putin | President of russia (1999–2008, 2012–present). | 11 | 17 | 57142 |
| Vitaliy Klitschko | Ukrainian boxer and politician. | 9 | 0 | 508 |
| Petro Poroshenko | President of ukraine from 2014 to 2019. | 7 | 0 | 727 |
| Sergiy Kyslytsya | Ukrainian diplomat. | 7 | 0 | 9 |
| Adolf Hitler | Austrian nationalized german politician, leader of the national socialist party and dictator of germany (1889-1945). | 3 | 16 | 193 |
| Hanna Malyar | Lawyer, deputy minister of defense of ukraine. | 3 | 1 | 7 |
| Olena Zelenska | Ukrainian architect and screenwriter. | 2 | 16 | 391 |
| Benito Mussolini | Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the national fascist party. | 2 | 16 | 18 |
| Eva Braun | Longtime companion and later wife of adolf hitler. | 2 | 16 | 18 |
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.