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 05 September 2022 and Monday 12 September 2022.
New:+33,955 Trend:+2,423
79,088 Fact-checking Tweets
New:+434 Trend:+290
4,366 Fact-checks
140 Fact-checking Organisations
Key Content and Provenance
During the period between Monday 05 September 2022 and Monday 12 September 2022, 33,955 new URLs have been identified as potential misinforming content. Out of the 255 domains identified by Fact-checking organisations (Figure 1), most of the new shared URLs were from facebook.com with an increase of +33,905 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 +2,439 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 -24 compared to the previous period.
The all time most important domain is facebook.com with a total of 683,438 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. | 434 | 123 | 151634 |
| Russia | Sovereign state in eastern europe and northern asia. | 342 | 21 | 25273 |
| Novokuznetsk | City in kemerovo oblast, russia. | 316 | 0 | 316 |
| Germany | Country in central europe. | 33 | 19 | 14446 |
| Europe | Continent. | 32 | 10 | 36004 |
| United States of America | Country located mainly in north america. | 25 | 29 | 34315 |
| Moscow | Capital and most populous city of russia. | 19 | 8 | 10724 |
| Soviet Union | Communist state in eurasia from 1922 to 1991. | 17 | 5 | 8932 |
| Earth | Third planet from the sun in the solar system. | 14 | 1 | 21367 |
| Berlin | Federal state, capital and largest city of germany. | 14 | 1 | 155 |
Table 3: Top locations mentioned in misinforming posts.
| Person | Description | Current Week | Previous Week | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Volodymyr Zelenskyy | Sixth and current president of ukraine. | 345 | 31 | 52392 |
| Vladimir Lenin | Russian politician, communist theorist and the founder of the soviet union. | 316 | 0 | 319 |
| Vladimir Putin | President of russia (1999–2008, 2012–present). | 18 | 11 | 57160 |
| Anthony Fauci | American immunologist and head of the u.s. National institute of allergy and infectious diseases. | 11 | 1 | 6665 |
| Antony Blinken | American government official and 71th u.s. Secretary of state. | 8 | 0 | 214 |
| Sergey Shoygu | Russian political figure. | 8 | 0 | 140 |
| Pat Buchanan | American politician and commentator. | 8 | 0 | 8 |
| Donald Trump | President of the united states from 2017 to 2021. | 7 | 2 | 917 |
| Steven L. Johnson | Researcher. | 7 | 1 | 225 |
| Dmitry Medvedev | Former president and prime minister of russia. | 6 | 1 | 10 |
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.