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 03 April 2023 and Monday 10 April 2023.
New:+0 Trend:-16
92,360 Fact-checking Tweets
New:+0 Trend:-58
5,776 Fact-checks
143 Fact-checking Organisations
Key Content and Provenance
During the period between Monday 03 April 2023 and Monday 10 April 2023, there was no new misinformation posts shared.
The all time most important domain is twitter.com with a total of 183,717 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.
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 143 fact-checking organisations.
The largest amount of fact-checked content comes from euvsdisinfo.eu (840 fact-checks) and the least from Verify Sy (1 fact-checks). Most fact-checked content are from VoxCheck (352) followed by Factcheck.ge (277) and AFP fact checking (255) (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’]. | 0 | 50 | 135361 |
| G | [‘Country in central europe’]. | 0 | 12 | 15630 |
| B | [‘Capital city of iraq’]. | 0 | 9 | 13454 |
| R | [‘Statue in chadron, united states of america - frédéric auguste bartholdi - 1950’]. | 0 | 5 | 8225 |
| P | [‘Country in central europe’]. | 0 | 3 | 15481 |
| Ukraine | Sovereign state in eastern europe. | 0 | 3 | 4590 |
| N | [‘Most populous city in the united states of america’]. | 0 | 3 | 3903 |
| I | [‘Country in western asia’]. | 0 | 2 | 24657 |
| E | [‘Continent’]. | 0 | 2 | 18074 |
| C | [‘Region of europe’]. | 0 | 2 | 6068 |
Table 3: Top locations mentioned in misinforming posts.
| Person | Description | Current Week | Previous Week | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| V | [‘President of russia (1999–2008, 2012–present)’]. | 0 | 13 | 61421 |
| P | [‘266th pope of the catholic church’]. | 0 | 5 | 2476 |
| I | [‘British actor’]. | 0 | 5 | 732 |
| B | [‘King of thailand (1927-2016)’]. | 0 | 4 | 2704 |
| E | [‘President of france since 2017’]. | 0 | 3 | 7920 |
| Joe Biden | President of the united states since 2021. | 0 | 3 | 793 |
| Donald Trump | 45th and current president of the united states. | 0 | 3 | 378 |
| Hunter Biden | American lawyer, investment advisor, and second son of former vice president joe biden. | 0 | 3 | 378 |
| U | [‘President of the european commission since 2019’]. | 0 | 1 | 4948 |
| J | [‘American educator, wife of joe biden and first lady of the united states’]. | 0 | 0 | 15561 |
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.