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 26 September 2022 and Monday 03 October 2022.

234,039 Misinforming Tweets
New:+14,876 Trend:+13,824
83,000 Fact-checking Tweets
New:+2,257 Trend:+1,838
4,694 Fact-checks
140 Fact-checking Organisations

Key Content and Provenance

During the period between Monday 26 September 2022 and Monday 03 October 2022, 14,876 new URLs have been identified as potential misinforming content. Out of the 270 domains identified by Fact-checking organisations (Figure 1), most of the new shared URLs were from twitter.com with an increase of +14,759 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 +13,834 compared to the previous total spread for the same domain whereas the domain that saw the least relative change was ellinikahoaxes.gr with a change of -40 compared to the previous period.

The all time most important domain is twitter.com with a total of 172,797 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://twitter.com/R82938886/status/1574865224108220423 Facta.news twitter.com 14443 0 14443
https://twitter.com/aktroitsky/status/1574709229604118528 15min.lt twitter.com 241 0 241
https://www.rt.com/russia/563788-referendums-ukraine-nato-dilemma/ euvsdisinfo.eu rt.com 79 0 79
https://twitter.com/ProgettoLepanto/status/1575097012735049730 Facta.news twitter.com 37 0 37
https://twitter.com/HoeyberghsJeff/status/1575007859384848384 dpa-factchecking.com twitter.com 26 0 26
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LQSYmda0Sc LeadStories youtube.com 7 10 8966
https://ria.ru/20220928/rossiya-1819905099.html euvsdisinfo.eu ria.ru 6 0 6
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202203/1254217.shtml StopFake.org globaltimes.cn 4 0 1517
https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1573217617271218176 Knack twitter.com 3 224 227
https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1498697538085568514 The Whistle twitter.com 3 1 24371

Table 1: Top misinforming content.

Fact-check URL Domain Current Week Previous Week Total
https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/2022/09/15/kein-belege-fuer-angeblichen-hartz-iv-betrug-durch-ukrainer-die-per-flixbus-einreisen/ correctiv.org 1611 8 1638
https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/2022/09/30/ja-auf-diesem-foto-traegt-ein-ukrainischer-soldat-einen-totenkopf-aufnaeher-mit-ss-motiven/ correctiv.org 274 0 274
https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/2022/09/26/manipuliert-artikel-der-berliner-zeitung-ueber-aussage-von-selenskyj-existiert-nicht/ correctiv.org 27 0 27
https://faktencheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.32K89J3-1 afp.com 22 0 22
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/mar/18/tulsi-gabbard/tulsi-gabbard-falsely-claims-us-not-so-different-r/ politifact.com 15 28 282
https://www.ellinikahoaxes.gr/2022/09/25/mariupol-entrance-new-sign-in-greek-missing-context/ ellinikahoaxes.gr 15 28 43
https://www.knack.be/factcheck/factcheck-video-toont-beelden-uit-poolse-stad-wroclav-en-geen-feest-in-door-oorlog-verscheurd-kiev/ knack.be 14 18 32
https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/2022/09/26/putins-teilmobilisierung-video-beweist-keinen-stau-von-35-kilometern-am-grenzuebergang-zu-finnland/ correctiv.org 13 0 13
https://www.knack.be/factcheck/factcheck-nee-dit-is-geen-video-van-oekraiense-kinderen-die-de-hymne-van-de-luftwaffe-zingen/ knack.be 13 0 13
https://fullfact.org/news/ukraine-war-russian-casualties-keegan-wallace-heappey/ fullfact.org 12 0 12

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 (457 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 (229) (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
U Country in eastern europe. 16946 696 243566
G Province of china. 1750 85 22598
B Country in south america. 1690 116 99612
M Capital and most populous city of russia. 371 104 48633
R Sovereign state in eastern europe and northern asia. 186 69 29700
F Sovereign state with mainland in western europe and several overseas territories. 83 92 6629
S Sovereign state in northern europe. 80 75 64501
D French department. 79 16 9701
C Country in north america. 56 15 38553
P Metropolis in maharashtra, india. 56 12 7124

Table 3: Top locations mentioned in misinforming posts.

Person Description Current Week Previous Week Total
V President of russia (1999–2008, 2012–present). 14845 239 134896
a Term used to describe the unknown creator of a work. 1613 17 1775
D Ukrainian politician. 65 70 2191
B King of thailand (1927-2016). 52 21 3900
J President of the united states since 2021. 44 56 8385
A President of mexico. 38 15 15653
M Russian television journalist. 22 13 4055
H Ukrainian politician (1931-2013). 19 12 2349
S Thai princess. 18 36 3036
I Ukrainian businessman. 17 5 1297

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.