Does avocado tea with mint prevent coronavirus? Immunity serum? Has Cuba produced a vaccine against Covid-19? Or was it Israel? Or, in fact, is this all a Chinese conspiracy to destroy Western economies? Don't worry, this is all false information that is being disseminated on social media due to the climate of apprehension that people have felt about the coronavirus pandemic. Just like the discovery of a vaccine for the new disease, explaining why people share fake news is still a challenge. But an initiative by Unicamp's Social Network Misinformation Study Group (EDReS) can help map and combat the rumors that are only disturbing the world right now.
The group created a hotline on WhatsApp where anyone can forward fake news related to the coronavirus received through the app. The number is +55 (19) 99327-8829. The idea is to gather a large amount of fake news to create a database, classify this information and identify some important patterns to combat it, such as the motivations that led to the shares and their sources. Started last week, the collection already shows that fake news can be as contagious as the coronavirus. To date, they have already gathered around 8 pieces of information.
EDReS is an interdisciplinary group and has researchers from different areas. Among its members are Leda Gitahy, professor at the Department of Scientific and Technological Policy at the Institute of Geosciences (IG) and Leandro Tessler, from the Department of Applied Physics at the Gleb Wataghin Institute of Physics (IFGW). They also partner with Attila Iamarino, doctor in microbiology and one of the creators of the channel Nerdology on YouTube, and other collaborations are under study, with Virgílio Almeida, researcher in Computer Science at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, and with the website The Facts, which works with information checking.
Jokes, miracle cures and conspiracies
The decision to monitor fake news about the coronavirus arose from the work already carried out by researchers on other topics. Leandro Tessler says that, in 2019, he began supervising doctoral research related to fake news about flat-earthing and, as a result, he learned about Leda Gitahy's work in the area. With the emergence of the coronavirus in the public debate, the option was automatic. As it is a study carried out at the same time as the spread of the coronavirus, he explains that the researchers' initial objective is to catalog the types of information that are shared to then understand how the spread of fake news occurs and what leads people to share. "When the first signs of the coronavirus appeared, a lot of misinformation soon began to circulate, first in English and then here in Brazil in Portuguese. We then understood that this was a window of opportunity to better understand how this happens", comments Leandro.
At the moment, they are still working on creating an automatic system that processes these messages and is capable of cataloging them. "There are several possible paths for us to follow, from choosing a message, so that we know where its origin is, and understanding how it spreads, to looking for the formation of bubbles, as is the case with people watching a video of misinformation and ends up looking for another video also linked to misinformation. This psychological and cognitive pattern of people that ends up causing them to deceive themselves, to become trapped in a bubble of pseudoscientific misinformation", he analyzes.
Even at the beginning, it is already possible to identify some common characteristics of the news that is propagated. It is mainly information of a humorous nature, which makes fun of the situation, and rumors about possible medicines, vaccines and miraculous procedures. Other fake news that worries researchers are conspiracy theories, aggravated by the country's political environment: "We are also concerned about other interests that may appear in news of a political nature, news that involves conspiracy theories and far-fetched plans, for one side or to the other. This is very detrimental to understanding the extent of the coronavirus phenomenon."
Leandro mentions the example of fake news involving a supposed coronavirus vaccine, which would have been developed in different countries. The group noticed that people with political views more aligned to the left were those who most shared the news that the vaccine came from Cuba. Network users identified with the right forwarded the information that the immunization came from Israel. Both pieces of news are false and reveal what people already believe and expect from the disease.
"There is no vaccine against the coronavirus, not in Israel, not in Cuba, anywhere. The whole world is looking for mechanisms for the vaccine, including efforts here in Brazil, in the United States, in Germany. A vaccine takes more than one year to be developed, tested, produced for mass vaccination. Other viruses also do not have a vaccine yet. This shows how people's political polarization, the way they look at the world, can influence the type of misinformation can be spread over the internet", warns Tessler.
“Understanding misinformation is very relevant”
There is no set deadline in which the group will collect fake news about the coronavirus. They will monitor the evolution of the phenomenon and, at the same time, work on ways of processing and analyzing fake news. By collecting and processing misinformation, the study may be able to map the origin of the most frequently sent fake news and identify the biggest rumors spread, so that public authorities and institutions that work with health policies can inform and guide the population in a more efficient way.
"Today, Brazilians get more information through social networks than through traditional means, such as television and the written press. For us, it is very important to understand the spread of fake news, misinformation, in order to try to find ways to contain it. This is very similar to a real epidemic. If we have mechanisms to contain the spread of misinformation, we can contribute to containing the pandemic itself", says Leandro.
