Characterizing and Comparing COVID-19 Misinformation Across Languages, Countries and Platforms

Misinformation/disinformation about COVID-19 has been rampant on social media\naround the world. In this study, we investigate COVID-19 misinformation/\ndisinformation on social media in multiple languages - Farsi (Persian),\nChinese, and English, about multiple countries - Iran, China, and the United\nStates (US), and on multiple platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,\nWeibo, and WhatsApp. Misinformation, especially about a global pandemic, is a\nglobal problem yet it is common for studies of COVID-19 misinformation on\nsocial media to focus on a single language, like English, a single country,\nlike the US, or a single platform, like Twitter. We utilized opportunistic\nsampling to compile 200 specific items of viral and yet debunked misinformation\nacross these languages, countries and platforms emerged between January 1 and\nAugust 31. We then categorized this collection based both on the topics of the\nmisinformation and the underlying roots of that misinformation. Our\nmulti-cultural and multilingual team observed that the nature of COVID-19\nmisinformation on social media varied in substantial ways across different\nlanguages/countries depending on the cultures, beliefs/religions, popularity of\nsocial media, types of platforms, freedom of speech and the power of people\nversus governments. We observe that politics is at the root of most of the\ncollected misinformation across all three languages in this dataset. We further\nobserve the different impact of government restrictions on platforms and\nplatform restrictions on content in Iran, China, and the US and their impact on\na key question of our age: how do we control misinformation without silencing\nthe voices we need to hold governments accountable?\n