Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Sep 18, 2020
Date Accepted: Nov 30, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: Dec 2, 2020
Characterizing the Spread of COVID-19 Misinformation in Eight Countries Using Exponential Growth Models
ABSTRACT
Background:
The epidemic of misinformation about COVID-19 transmission, prevention, and treatment has been raging since the start of the pandemic. However, data on exposure and impact of misinformation is not readily available.
Objective:
Understanding the spread of misinformation, similarities and differences across different contexts can help in the development of appropriate interventions for limiting its impact similar to how we address infectious disease epidemics. We aim to characterize and compare the start, peak and doubling time of COVID-19 rumors across eight countries using an exponential growth model usually employed to study infectious disease epidemics.
Methods:
Coronavirus rumors were selected from the WHO MythBusters website. Data representing exposure was obtained from Google Trends API for eight English-speaking countries. Exponential growth models were used in modeling trends for each country.
Results:
Searches for “coronavirus AND 5g” started at different times but peaked in the same week for six countries. This search also had the shortest doubling time across all misinformation topics, with the shortest time in Nigeria and South Africa. Searches for “coronavirus AND ginger” started at the same time for several counties, but peaks were incongruent and searches did not always grow exponentially after the initial week. Searches for “coronavirus AND sun” had different start times across counties, but peaked at the same time for multiple countries.
Conclusions:
Patterns in start, peak and doubling time for “coronavirus AND 5G” were different from other rumors and were somewhat consistent across countries assessed. Searches for other rumors varied in start and peak time, and did not necessarily grow exponentially. These findings can be used to direct COVID-related crisis communication and provide more effective health care.
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