Pietro Gravino and Vittorio Loreto from Sony CSL Paris are members of the new task force promoted by AGCOM, the Italian Authority for Communications Guarantees, studying and analysing misinformation and the socio-economic impacts that information on the new COVID-19 virus – whether truthful or false – may have. Luciano Pietronero (Sapienza University of Rome – Department of Physics and Istituto Enrico Fermi of Rome), Walter Quattrociocchi and Fabiana Zollo (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), Antonio Scala and Emanuele Brugnoli (Institute of the Complex Systems of the Italian National Research Council) are other members of the task force.
AGICOM has just issued a special edition of their Online misinformation monitoring system in the time of Coronavirus. The first release is now available in Italian here. The report presents analyses concerning information and misinformation about COVID-19. According to data, there has been an upward trend of both truthful and false information on Coronavirus.
Online misinformation monitoring system in the time of Coronavirus
From February 21 to March 22, 38% of news daily published by misinformation sources were about the virus (46% in the last two weeks). Analyses also show that misinformation websites have on average published four articles on coronavirus per day. Furthermore, from March 9 to March 22, 36% of the posts/tweets coming from misinformation sources pivoted around COVID-19 (+28% relative to the end of January).
Fake news over total amount of online information on Coronavirus (average daily % in different weeks)
If we consider the total amount of online information about coronavirus, misinformation is about 5%, showing a decreasing trend due to the increase in informative contents.
For more information about AGCOM Online misinformation monitoring system click here.