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By Clare O’Gara
Mon | Apr 6, 2020 | 5:15 AM PDT

In a crisis like this, having the right information is almost as important as staying healthy.

While we can help mitigate COVID-19 through social distancing and physical isolation, getting the correct facts about coronavirus can be harder than it looks. Misinformation is everywhere online.

Just a few weeks ago, a website emerged promising free COVID-19 "vaccines" to anyone willing to pay $4.95 shipping. As of publication, there is no cure for the novel coronavirus.

This is only the tip of the "fake news" iceberg.

Misinformation about who COVID-19 can infect, false preventative measures, and racist claims about the virus' origin are spreading around social media at lightning speed.

But amid the confusion, one voice, and her research, is speaking loud and clear.

Researcher uses big data to track COVID-19 misinformation

According to Kathleen Carley, a CyLab faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University:

"Similar to the virus itself, disinformation about the virus is spreading quickly—only much, much faster."

Carley has been hard at work researching the flood of disinformation surrounding coronavirus, and she's using big data to help.

In an interview with CyLab, she explains the main categories of COVID-19 disinformation:

  1. There are a lot of stories containing inaccurate information about cures or preventative measures, such as ones saying that drinking bleach will protect you, or that coating your body in sesame oil helps.
  2. There are a number of stories about the nature of the virus, such as the claim that children cannot get the virus, which is not true.
  3. There are also a number of stories about weaponization or bio-engineering of the virus.

Bots are fueling coronavirus and COVID-19 misinformation

Carley also uncovered how bots are making false facts even easier to come by:

"It's too early to say where the bots are coming from, but we're finding that 40 percent of the discussion around coronavirus and COVID-19 is coming from bots. Of the users themselves engaging in conversation around the virus, we're finding around 22 percent of them are bots."

And now for the really scary bot big data:

"A big issue is that these bots are very influential—the network around them is configured such that they have a lot of listeners. Forty-two percent of the top 50 influential mentioners are bots, 82 percent of the top 50 influential re-tweeters are bots, and 62 percent of the top 1,000 re-tweeters are bots."

What to do if you see coronavirus misinformation

Just like we all need to protect ourselves from COVID-19, we also need to protect ourselves and others from false COVID-19 information.

What does Carley recommend? Similar to actions like sheltering in place and social distancing, squashing misinformation online also requires collective participation:

"If you see disinformation, call it out, because some of it is deadly. If you see satire or a joke about the virus or COVID-19, don't share it; a person who reads it might not realize that it's satire."

And unfortunately, at this point in history, this fake news could hurt those you love:

"During elections, sharing disinformation poses a threat to democracy. That is very bad. In this situation, if you follow the guidelines in some of this disinformation, you could actually harm yourself."

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