Survey: Facebook most prolific enabler of COVID-19 disinformation pandemic

MANILA, Philippines — Facebook has emerged as the “most prolific enabler of false and misleading information” about the coronavirus disease pandemic within the social media ecosystem, an international survey among journalists showed.

It also showed that political leaders and elected officials were among those identified as top sources of disinformation about COVID-19, highlighting a disinformation pandemic or disinfodemic that accompanied the global health crisis.

The findings were among initial results of the collaborative research initiative of the International Center for Journalists and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.

It analyzed responses from 1,406 English language respondents comprised of journalists, editors and other media workers from 125 countries.

Based on the survey, 66 percent of the respondents identified Facebook as a platform where disinformation was spreading prolifically.

Forty-two percent identified Twitter, while 35 percent said disinformation spread prolifically on Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp.

Some 22 percent identified YouTube, followed by Facebook-owned platforms Instagram (11 percent) and Messenger (nine percent).

The other options were identified by less than 10 percent of the respondents. These include email, state-controlled media, Google search, TikTok, Reddit, Telegram, WeChat, Weibo, Vkontakte, Snapchat and Pinterest.

“When it came to reporting dis/misinformation to the platforms, 82 percent of respondents said they had reported such content to at least one of the identified companies during the first wave of the pandemic,” read the report.

“A quarter (25 percent) of respondents said that they had reported dis/misinformation to Facebook – by far the highest for any single platform,” it added.

Almost half said they were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with social media companies’ responses when they referred instances of dis or misinformation for investigation, noting that the most common response was no response at all.