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 12 September 2022 and Monday 19 September 2022.

926,609 Misinforming Tweets
New:+28,408 Trend:-5,547
79,179 Fact-checking Tweets
New:+91 Trend:-343
4,366 Fact-checks
140 Fact-checking Organisations

Key Content and Provenance

During the period between Monday 12 September 2022 and Monday 19 September 2022, 28,408 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 +28,376 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 twitter.com with a change of +19 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 -5,529 compared to the previous period.

The all time most important domain is facebook.com with a total of 711,814 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.

Misinforming URL Fact-check URL Domain Current Week Previous Week Total
https://www.facebook.com/watch VoxCheck facebook.com 28376 33905 711517
https://twitter.com/adamrangpr/status/1529799570753978369 Knack.be twitter.com 18 0 13536
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LQSYmda0Sc LeadStories youtube.com 4 6 8940
https://twitter.com/Ukraine66251776/status/1518045080656953349 Knack.be twitter.com 3 0 778
https://www.pronews.gr/amyna-asfaleia/otan-o-zelenski-ekane-parelasi-me-tous-gay-stin-vostoni-to-1999 Ellinika Hoaxes pronews.gr 2 0 2
https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1498697538085568514 The Whistle twitter.com 1 0 24365
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202203/1254217.shtml StopFake.org globaltimes.cn 1 0 1506
https://realrawnews.com/2022/02/shock-claim-russian-spetznas-liberate-child-trafficking-victims-in-ukraine LeadStories realrawnews.com 1 0 755
https://twitter.com/Rogozin/status/1504203328330387456 Facta.news twitter.com 1 0 316
https://www.logicno.com/politika/pogledajte-kako-nas-lazu-jansa-kaczynski-i-fiala-nisu-uopce-bili-u-kijevu.html Faktograf.hr logicno.com 1 0 28

Table 1: Top misinforming content.

Fact-check URL Domain Current Week Previous Week Total
https://factuel.afp.com/doc.afp.com.32HR4QR afp.com 16 309 325
https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/putin-is-winning-and-europe-will-have-to-ease-sanctions-on-russia-says-politico euvsdisinfo.eu 9 0 9
https://www.ellinikahoaxes.gr/2022/09/15/photo-volodymyr-zelensky-gay-pride-boston-altered-image/ ellinikahoaxes.gr 8 0 8
https://fullfact.org/news/ukraine-land-sales-zelenskyy/ fullfact.org 4 3 52
https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/during-german-occupation-of-ukraine-the-nazi-bandera-contributed-to-the-genocide-of-his-own-people euvsdisinfo.eu 4 2 43
https://www.factcheck.org/2022/03/marjorie-taylor-greene-parrots-russian-talking-point-on-ukraine/ factcheck.org 4 0 157
https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.32HZ9FH afp.com 4 0 4
https://www.ellinikahoaxes.gr/2022/09/15/russian-helicopters-attack-barge-misinformation/ ellinikahoaxes.gr 3 0 3
https://www.stopfake.org/en/putin-s-fake-huge-numbers-of-ukrainians-hate-the-kyiv-regime/ stopfake.org 3 0 3
https://www.knack.be/factcheck/factcheck-ja-zelensky-verbood-elf-politieke-partijen/ knack.be 2 7 40

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. 66 434 151700
Russia Sovereign state in eastern europe and northern asia. 28 342 25301
Novokuznetsk City in kemerovo oblast, russia. 17 316 333
United States of America Country located mainly in north america. 14 25 34329
Europe Continent. 12 32 36016
Germany Country in central europe. 10 33 14456
New York City Most populous city in the united states. 10 0 173
Moscow Capital and most populous city of russia. 9 19 10733
Soviet Union Communist state in eurasia from 1922 to 1991. 6 17 8938
Earth Third planet from the sun in the solar system. 5 14 21372

Table 3: Top locations mentioned in misinforming posts.

Person Description Current Week Previous Week Total
Volodymyr Zelenskyy Sixth and current president of ukraine. 43 345 52435
Vladimir Lenin Russian politician, communist theorist and the founder of the soviet union. 16 316 335
Vladimir Putin President of russia (1999–2008, 2012–present). 12 18 57172
Viktor Yanukovych Ukrainian politician who was the president of ukraine. 4 0 2194
Bill Clinton 42nd president of the united states. 4 0 1031
Sergey Lavrov Russian politician and foreign minister. 4 0 480
Barack Obama 44th president of the united states. 4 0 366
Marjorie Taylor Greene American politician and businesswoman from the state of georgia. 4 0 187
George W. Bush President of the united states from 2001 to 2009. 4 0 169
Dmitry Medvedev Former president and prime minister of russia. 2 6 12

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.