The team wrote that Donald Trump was probably the biggest driver of COVID-19 disinformation
Washington, United States:
U.S. President Donald Trump has been the primary global contributor to disinformation about Covid-19 during the pandemic, a Cornell University study said Thursday.
A team from the Cornell Alliance for Science evaluated 38 million articles published by traditional English-language media around the world between January 1 and May 26 of this year.
The database they used aggregates coverage of countries such as the United States, Great Britain, India, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and other African and Asian countries. .
They identified 522,472 news articles that reproduced or amplified misinformation related to the coronavirus pandemic, or what the World Health Organization has called “the infodemic.”
These have been categorized into 11 main sub-themes, ranging from conspiracy theories and attacks on top scientist Anthony Fauci to the idea that the virus is a biological weapon triggered by China.
But by far the most popular topic was what the study authors called “miracle cures,” which featured in 295,351 articles – more than the other 10 combined.
The authors found that President Trump’s comments led to major spikes in the topic of ‘miracle cures’, led by his April 24 press briefing where he was considering the possibility of using disinfectants inside the body. to cure the coronavirus.
Similar peaks were seen when he promoted unproven treatments like hydroxychloroquine.
“We therefore conclude that the President of the United States was probably the main driver of the ‘infodemic’ disinformation of COVID-19,” the team wrote.
Sara Evanega, who led the study and is director of the Cornell Alliance for Science, said: “If people are misled by unscientific and unsubstantiated disease claims, they are less likely to follow the guidelines. official and thus risk spreading the virus. “
Co-author Jordan Adams, data analyst at Cision Insights who provided the database, added: “One of the most interesting aspects of the data collection process was to uncover the staggering amount of disinformation coverage directly related to public comments from a small number of people. “
After miracle cures, the second most common subject of misinformation was that the pandemic was created to advance a “new world order”.
Next is the claim that the pandemic was a hoax for political gain on the part of the US Democratic Party, followed by plots alleging the virus was a biological weapon released by a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
Conspiracy theories linking the pandemic to philanthropist Bill Gates came next, followed by the hoax that the symptoms of Covid-19 are caused by 5G phone networks, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and the notion that the virus is a form of control. Population.
Attacks on US government scientist Fauci, references to the debunked “Plandemic” video, and blaming the virus on Chinese people consuming bat soup complete the list.
The study’s authors also tracked how stories were shared on social media, finding that the posts had 36 million engagements, three-quarters of which were on Facebook.
The research was partially funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
