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Dealing with the COVID-19 Infodemic: A Short Guide to Fact-Checking

DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP INITIATIVE: BRIDGING THE MAINSTREAM-ETHNIC DIGITAL DIVIDE IN COVID-19 LITERACY

BY ALICJA MINDA AND NASER MIFTARI

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“Learning how to fact-check can help writers become better reporters, because in a way fact-checking is reporting in reverse. Knowing how a fact-checker might pick a story apart helps a writer learn to think twice before relying on a questionable source.”� ��Broke Borel, The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking

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Dealing with COVID-19 Infodemic

Contents:
I. Knowing the enemy: types, sources and motives of COVID-19-related mis- and disinformation
II. Fighting the enemy: traditional fact-checking vs. debunking fake news
III. Steps and tools
IV. Tips for journalists
V. Glossary of relevant terms
VI. Resources
VI. Exercise
VII. References

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Knowing the enemy

The flood of mis- and disinformation concerning the COVID-19 pandemic has been called an� infodemic by the WHO.
The CoronaVirusFacts Alliance of over 100 fact-checking organizations in more than 70 � countries, working in more than 40 languages, has so far verified more than 9,000 dubious � claims and narratives related to COVID-19.
Just as the pandemic, misinformation comes in waves. As the alliance writes on its website, at� first “many hoaxes were about the origin of the virus. Then the alliance detected falsehoods� on how the disease spreads, and cures and preventions. Now we are finding hoaxes� about religious groups, politicians and the impact of COVID-19 on a country’s health � system.”
In November, the alliance warned that, with the news of effective vaccine candidates, we� need to prepare for a wave of anti-vaccination misinformation and fake news

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��Knowing the enemy �Types of misinformation

RECONFIGURED CONTENT – Existing and often true information spun, twisted, re-contextualised, or� reworked; accounted for 59 per cent of misinformation circulated from January to end-March, based on � a sample of 225 fact-checks collected by First Draft News and analyzed by the Reuters Institute for the� Study of Journalism (Brennen et al., 2020). Yet it generated 87 per cent of social media interactions.
Reconfigured content can take the form of:

Misleading content: some true information, but details reformulated, selected, and re-contextualised in ways that made them false or misleading, for example medical advice containing both true and untrue information
False content: images or videos labelled or described as being something other than they are
Manipulated content: images or video manipulated using simple editing software

FABRICATED CONTENT – In the early days, 38 per cent of misinformation spotted by First Draft News

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Knowing the enemy �Types of misinformation

UNESCO distinguishes 4 main format types:
Emotive narrative constructs and memes - false claims and textual narratives which often mix strong emotional language, lies and/or incomplete information, and personal opinions, along with elements of truth. Often circulated on closed messaging apps.
Fraudulently altered, fabricated, or decontextualised images and videos
Fabricated websites and authoritative identities
Disinformation campaigns

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��Knowing the enemy �Examples of misleading content

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This tweet from an account called @LotusOak2, which tweets almost exclusively anti-vax and pro-homeopathy messages, uses a real clip of Dr. Anthony Fauci to suggest he admits the COVID-19 vaccine could be dangerous, but the highlighted quote is taken out of context.

In what precedes the quote, Dr. Fauci says: “So at the same time that we're testing, we're going to try to make sure we don't have enhancement. It’s the worst possible thing you can do is to vaccinate somebody to prevent infection and actually to make them worse.”

https://twitter.com/LotusOak2/status/1328132237360062466

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Knowing the enemy�Examples of misleading content: “False framing”

Compare these two tweets. Both refer to a real study published in a reputable medical journal, the BMJ.

The first, tweeted from an anonymous account, quotes only a part of a sentence taken from the summary of the study.

https://twitter.com/LotusOak2/status/1328440028469616646

The second, posted by a science journalist, quotes the entire sentence, completely changing the meaning. https://twitter.com/robivil/status/1185285514045378561

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Knowing the enemy�Types of claims

Various studies on COVID-19 misinformation offer different classifications of types of claims or themes being the subject of mis- or disinformation.

In the initial months of the pandemic (January to end-March), a study by Brennen et al. found that the most popular claims pertained to actions of public authorities (governments, public health, WHO, etc.). Based on an analysis of 225 fact-checks collected by First Draft News:

Our finding that much misinformation directly or indirectly questions the actions, competence, or legitimacy of public authorities (including governments, health authorities, and international organisations) suggests it will be difficult for those institutions to address or correct it directly… (Brennen et al., 2020)

Other popular themes included community spread, general medical claims, and claims about prominent actors.

Conspiracy theories constituted 17 per cent of claims collected by First Draft News
Vaccine development constituted only 5 per cent of claims in those initial months

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Knowing the enemy�Types of claims

A huge study by Evanega et al. analyzing 38 million articles published in English-language media around the world from January 1 up to May 26, 2020 identified 11 different conspiracy theory themes or misinformation sub-topics in the COVID-19 infodemic:

Miracle cures
New world order / deep state
Democratic party hoax (U.S.)
Wuhan lab / bioweapon
Bill Gates
5G technology
Anti-Semitic conspiracies
Population control
Dr. Anthony Fauci
Plandemic
Bat soup

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Knowing the enemy�Types of claims

To date, the CoronaVirusFacts Alliance’s interactive graphic shows that the most popular categories of fact-checks performed by members of the alliance around the world have been about:

Governments
Spread
Videos shared on social media
Hospitals
Prevention
Cures
Lockdown
Vaccines

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Knowing the enemy�Sources of misinformation

Misinformation in Canada is more present on social media than in traditional media
BOTTOM-UP – The bulk of the misinformation from January to end-March was generated by ordinary people (Brennen et al.)
TOP-DOWN – Only 20 per cent of misinformation was spread by politicians, celebrities, high-level officials. Public figures may not be spreading the majority of fake news, but they generate high rates of engagement on social media

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Knowing the enemy�Reasons and motives of misinformation

Information gaps and deficits

… governments have not always succeeded in providing clear, useful, and trusted information to address pressing public questions. In the absence of sufficient information, misinformation about these topics may fill in gaps in public understanding, and those distrustful of their government or political elites may be disinclined to trust official communications on these matters.” (Brennen et al., 2020)

Desire to troll or sow discord
Legitimate belief information is true
Political partisanship
Profit generation (content linked to supposed cures or protective equipment for sale, or content meant to attract heavy traffic for advertisers)
Collection of personal health data

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Fighting the enemy�Traditional fact-checking

Fact-checking is traditionally understood as a post-editing review process performed by an outsider who was not involved in the story’s creation. A fact-checker would take an edited story to assess the writer’s sources and probe the story’s foundations: confirm the presented facts and decide whether they were used to build a fair representation of reality. For that, the writer would be requested to hand over a draft of the story with sources cited in footnotes, all of the referenced material (including interview recordings and transcripts) as well as contact information to human sources. Even opinion pieces are based on some facts, and these can be subject to a fact-check, but not the conclusions drawn by the author. Fact-checking in this form is practiced mostly in magazines (The Walrus, New Yorker). Newspapers and other news outlets typically don’t follow this process.

A traditional fact-checker would probe for example:

Names of people and places (spelling)
People’s titles and jobs
Physical descriptions of people and places
Dates, ages
Quotes
Any numbers and measurements

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Fighting the enemy�Traditional fact-checking

Following is an example from The Walrus fact-checking guide: These two paragraphs have at least 37 facts to be confirmed separately:

The Nisga’a First Nation lies at the northern edge of the Great Bear Rainforest in a valley that makes no secret of its volcanic history. The rutted ribbon of Highway 113 winds through ancient lava beds from Canada’s most recent eruption in the seventeenth century past sulphur hot springs, Lava Lake, and the dormant Tseax cinder cone. It is a region where forces of nature and humans have warred over space that’s plagued by overlapping powers.

“Grizzly hunts are the most profitable hunts that we do,” says Harry Nyce Jr., CEO of Nisga’a Pacific Ventures, as he reclines at the boardroom table in his office in Gitlaxt’aamiks, one of the four villages in the Nisga’a Nation. Copies of Huntin’ Fool and Mountain Hunter magazines, featuring images of big men holding big animals, cascade neatly across the table.

Try to identify them, then see a partial list of the facts to be checked on the next slide.

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Fighting the enemy�Traditional fact-checking

1. “Nisga’a First Nation” is spelled properly

2. It is a First Nation (registered and self-identified as

such)

3. The nation’s boundaries lie in a valley at the northern

edge of the Great Bear Rainforest

4. “Great Bear Rainforest” is spelled properly

5. There is a valley at the northern edge

6. This valley has a volcanic history

7. Highway 113 winds through it

8. “Highway 113” is spelled properly

9. There are lava beds there

10. They come from an eruption in the seventeenth

century

11. This eruption was Canada’s most recent (there has been

no eruption in Canada since)

12. There are also hot springs
13. These hot springs are sulphur hot springs (which is the right term for it)
14. There is a lake
15. “Lava Lake” is spelled properly
16. There is a cinder cone
17. It is dormant
18. “Tseax” is spelled properly
… and so on

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Fighting the enemy�Fact-checking

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Primary sources include:	Secondary sources include:
official statistics	history books
gov’t documents/websites, public records	biographies
eyewitness reports	encyclopedias
personal accounts, memoirs, diaries	scientific reviews
data calculations	expert knowledge
surveys	history books
scientific studies, experiments	magazines, newspapers, online media
photographs, maps, video and film

Whether fact-checking an article or a claim by an elected official, you will need to refer to primary sources or reliable secondary sources.

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Fighting the enemy�Fact-checking

Not all content is fact-checkable. Consider:
COVID-19 has claimed over 11,000 lives in Canada. => can be checked by referring to official statistics provided by the public health officials
The government’s negligence has led to over 11,000 COVID-19-related deaths. => partly checkable: we can easily confirm the number of deaths, but how to verify whether and to what extent government’s negligence was to blame? Things to consider could include whether sufficient funding was provided to the health care sector and senior care homes, whether private care homes are properly regulated, and even if the immigration and integration policies are geared toward ensuring sufficient staffing of hospitals, but it’s very hard to establish causation between any of these and the number of deaths.
If the XYZ party were in power, there wouldn’t have been so many COVID deaths in care homes. => not checkable: there is no way of knowing what would have happened in a hypothetical scenario.

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Fighting the enemy�Fact-checking in today’s media landscape

Fact-checking in today’s media landscape more often means confirming or refuting claims of public relevance, often made by public officials. It is often performed by fact-checking organizations like PolitiFact or Snopes. Many of them are a part of the International Fact-Checking Network at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

How to assess a source in 6 steps:
Proximity: is the source providing first- or second-hand knowledge?
Expertise: what are the source’s credentials?
Rigour: how was evidence collected?
Transparency: what is known about the evidence, methodology?
Reliability: does the source have a track record?
Conflict of interest: is the source gaining anything from the data, evidence or expertise provided?
Source: “Hands-On Fact-Checking: A Short Course,” Poynter Institute

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Fighting the enemy�Assessing academic sources

“For academics and other experts, consider their credentials. Is their school accredited? Is their work controversial? It’s okay to include contentious views in a story, but it’s important to put them in context. For example, you can find doctors who are against vaccination and scientists who are climate change skeptics, but the scientific consensus is clear on both of these topics: vaccines are generally safe and effective, and climate change is real and under way.”
Broke Borel, The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking

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Fighting the enemy�Consulting an academic paper

Consulting an academic paper

A typical academic paper has six essential parts:

Abstract: overview of the study including findings
Introduction: background information, context
Methods: detailed description of methodology
Results: findings
Discussion: interpretation of the results, broader context,
References

If findings need to be confirmed, a fact-checker can go straight to the abstract. The author’s and the publisher’s credentials should also be looked up, for example on Google Scholar.

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Fighting the enemy�Debunking fake news

As opposed to fact-checkable public claims, fake news pieces are dubious narratives of unknown or uncertain origin, often user-generated content (UGC). Debunking fake news, therefore, entails using primary evidence to verify the content.

Basic verification tools include:

- To verify photos: reverse image search

- To verify geolocation: Google Earth

All-in-one: Bellingcat's Online Investigation Toolkit

In order to deconstruct fake news, consider:
Origin: where did the rumour originate?
Which social media accounts have been sharing the message most often, who is behind these social media accounts, and what is their political/ideological agenda? Are they anonymous? Do they look like bots?
Photos: where did the images originate? Have they been taken out of context? Do they appear to be manipulated?
Credibility: how credible is the narrative? Does it sound probable or outlandish? Does it evoke a strong emotional reaction?

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Source: “Hands-On Fact-Checking: A Short Course,” Poynter Institute

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Fighting the enemy�Practical steps and tools

Mike Caulfield, a digital information literacy expert at Washington State University and author of Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers, recommends a four-move method called SIFT to help sort fact from fiction on the web:

S – Stop

I – Investigate the source

F – Find better coverage

T – Trace claims, quotes and media to the original context

Source: https://infodemic.blog/

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Fighting the enemy �The SIFT method

STOP – “When you feel strong emotion, surprise, or just an irrepressible urge to share something… stop.”
INVESTIGATE THE SOURCE – Start with Mike Caulfield’s tips: On Twitter, hover over the link to the profile. For websites, look for a Wikipedia entry. Most major publications have one, so its lack may be a bad sign. If a source can be identified, use Poynter’s 6-step test to try to evaluate it (proximity, expertise, rigour, transparency, reliability, conflict of interest).
Hovering over the Twitter profiles from the previous examples, we find:

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Fighting the enemy �The SIFT method

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<= Anonymous

No profile pic

No bio

=>

We know her name.

We can see her face.

Bio says “health writer and journalist.”

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Fighting the enemy �The SIFT method

FIND BETTER COVERAGE - If the story appears in several reputable sources, it’s more likely to be true. A simple Google search will also throw up if the story had been debunked by one of the major fact-checking websites.
TRACE CLAIMS, QUOTES, AND MEDIA TO ORIGINAL CONTEXT – Check the date. Caulfield: “Date-hacking is not the most common form of disinformation, but it can be a particularly effective technique, because it allows people trying to trick you to use very prestigious sources.” For posts linking to articles, click through to the actual story (and then also check the date) and search for relevant terms. The BMJ article cited above is a perfect example.

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Fighting the enemy�Verification tools

Bellingcat's Online Investigation Toolkit

A free Google-doc toolkit with verification tools for image/video search, social media, people, maps/satellites, transport, websites, archiving, companies, data visualization, et al.

How to perform a reverse image search

The most popular tools are Google Images and TinEye (a Toronto-based company!)

When you want to check if a given picture or image has been used in other contexts or trace its origin, copy the image’s URL or save it to your device.
Go to Google Images or TinEye. In Google Images, click on the camera icon, which stands for “Search by image,” to uncover two options: “Paste image URL” or “Upload an image.” Similarly, in TinEye the start screen is a search bar where you can paste the copied URL or upload the saved image. You can also drag and drop your images to start your search. Both engines will show where else the same image has been used.

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Fighting the enemy�Verification tools

GOOGLE IMAGES

TINEYE

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Fighting the enemy�Verification tools

How to recognize a Twitter bot or a fake account? Some features include:
Anonymous profile: handle likely to contain numbers, profile picture an egghead or a stock image, no bio
In real Twitter profiles, there is a connection between the profile name and the URL. Bot profiles, even if they use a human name like John Smith, may have URLs without any connection to that name
Tweets a lot: a human might post 10-15 times a day, whereas bots post up to 2,000 tweets a day; they often post the same or similar content several times
Retweets and posts links instead of creating original posts.
Follows many accounts but doesn’t have many followers.
May have stopped at following 2,001 people. Under Twitter rules, a user can only follow up to 2,000 people. In order to go over, a user needs to have 2,000 people following them back.

If an account has one of these characteristics, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s fake; many real accounts are anonymous or don’t have a human profile image. A combination of several of these is more likely to identify a bot.

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Fighting the enemy�Verification tools

How to use Google Earth

Fact-checkers often rely on Google Earth to verify whether a video or a photo was actually taken where it is claimed to have been taken.

A more advanced Google Earth Pro version, which is a free desktop app, has a collection of historical images of places, so you can go back in time and confirm what a place looked like in the past or try to figure out when a photo was taken.

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Tips for journalists

When reporting on the coronavirus:

Gary Schwitzwer, publisher at HealthNewsReview.org and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, says:

Include context, background, explanations and independent perspective
Interview independent sources with no conflicts of interest; avoid single-source stories even using a well-known expert
Explain the limitations of the study or the announcement. Don’t report information from preprints (studies that hadn’t undergone peer review yet) without warning readers about the limitations of that information.

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Tips for journalists

When reporting on the coronavirus:

Laura Helmuth, Washington Post Health and Science Editor, says:

Science on the novel coronavirus is constantly evolving and there are many gaps, leaving space for misinformation to fill them, so explain what we don’t know.
If you’re debunking fake news, make it simple and brief: replace a false piece of information with something that is true.
Immediately identify a falsehood for what it is, especially in headlines. Many people scrolling their social media feeds will only read the headline.
Provide a reason why the falsehood has been spreading or why someone is promoting it, to help people understand why they’re seeing this misinformation.
Don’t debunk a fringe piece that’s not prominent, so that it doesn’t get repeated and reinforced.
Acknowledge people’s fears, don’t dismiss them.

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Glossary of relevant terms

Preprint: Preprints are preliminary reports of work that have not been certified by peer review. MedRxiv, which is a major preprint server for the health sciences, warns on its website that preprints “should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.”
Correlation vs. causation: In statistical terms, correlation means an association between two quantitative variables. The degree of association is expressed by a correlation coefficient, which is measured on a scale from +1 (when one variable increases as the other increases) through 0 (no correlation) to –1 (when one decreases as the other increases). But correlation does not imply causation; it does not mean that changes in one variable cause changes in the other variable.
P-value: In research, p-value is used to determine whether the outcome of a given study is statistically significant or not. A commonly accepted p-value is 0.05, which means the researchers are 95% certain their results are significant.

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Glossary of relevant terms

Relative risks vs. absolute risks. Consider:

Canada’s 2020 electric car sales volume rises by 100% y/y => seems like a big deal (relative increase)

vs.

Canada’s 2020 electric car sales volume rises from 2 to 4 y/y => it is a 100% increase, but it’s definitely not a big deal, since the sales were insignificant to start with (increase in absolute terms)

Similarly, medical studies that include statements about how a given treatment reduces or increases a risk of a given health outcome in relative terms can seem like a big deal, for example, a certain treatment can reduce mortality by 50%, but in absolute terms it may be that the treatment reduces death rates from 0.002% to 0.001%, which is not as significant.

(Source: https://academic.oup.com/ndt/article/32/suppl_2/ii13/3056571)

For health reporters, it’s important to understand the difference and, whenever possible, to report both the relative risk and the absolute risk.

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Resources�Databases of COVID-19-related fact-checks

The CoronaVirusFacts Database, developed by the CoronaVirusFacts Alliance of fact-checkers in more than 70 countries, working in at least 40 languages, led by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at the Poynter Institute: https://www.poynter.org/ifcn-covid-19-misinformation/

Mythbusters, the World Health Organization’s database of facts countering the most common types of misinformation: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/myth-busters

DisinfoWatch, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s COVID-19 and foreign disinformation monitoring and debunking platform: https://disinfowatch.org/database/

Health Feedback, a worldwide network of scientists sorting fact from fiction in health and medical media coverage, led by the French not-for-profit Science Feedback: https://healthfeedback.org/

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Resources�Databases of COVID-19-related fact-checks

COVIDGlobal Misinformation Dashboard 2020 and COVIDCanada News Dashboard by the Social Media Lab at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University: https://datastudio.google.com/reporting/87b00158-5589-4154-a81b-c17cdb0d0d19/page/Kn2IB

https://datastudio.google.com/reporting/56e0d9fd-6c26-4d25-986c-9ec2e5e27ce7/page/1M

FAQs Fact Check by the University of Toronto Libraries: https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/c.php?g=715025&p=5097957#s-lg-box-16063992

Snopes Medical: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/category/medical/

NewsGuard COVID-19 Misinformation Resources: https://www.newsguardtech.com/covid-19-resources/

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Resources�Other resources

Multilingual Resources for Diverse Communities During COVID-19 from Ottawa Public Health: https://www.ottawapublichealth.ca/en/public-health-topics/multilingual-resources.aspx

Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resource Center at the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP): https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19

Canada’s COVID-19 Infobase: https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/epidemiological-summary-covid-19-cases.html)

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/

How to review a PR news release from a pharmaceutical company: 10 criteria recommended by HealthNewsReview.org: https://www.healthnewsreview.org/about-us/review-criteria/

Free fact-checking courses:

Poynter Institute: https://www.poynter.org/shop/fact-checking/handson-factchecking/
First Draft: https://firstdraftnews.org/latest/covering-coronavirus-an-online-course-for-journalists/

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Exercise

Analyze this article entitled "Top Virologist: 'Worst Thing You Can Do Is Make The Vaccine Compulsory," published on November 19, 2020 on News Punch: https://newspunch.com/top-virologist-worst-thing-you-can-do-is-make-the-vaccine-compulsory/
Assess the source: After reading the article, look through the website, read the About Us section and the Wikipedia entry devoted to the outlet
While reading the article, make note of all facts you think are checkable and try to verify them
Investigate the credentials of any experts quoted in the story
Investigate other media referred to in the story (click through)
Establish the origin of the picture

Have you found any information that’s not accurate?

Tip: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=Ticketmaster+mandatory+vaccine

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References

Antonova, Natalia. 2020. “Investigating Coronavirus Fakes And Disinfo? Here Are Some Tools For You.” Bellingcat. https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2020/03/27/investigating-coronavirus-fakes-and-disinfo-here-are-some-tools-for-you/. Access: December 1, 2020.
Borel, Brooke. 2016. The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking. University of Chicago Press.
Brennen et al. 2020. “Types, Sources, and Claims of COVID-19 Misinformation.” Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/types-sources-and-claims-covid-19-misinformation. Access: November 29, 2020.
Bridgman et al. 2020. “The Causes and Consequences of COVID-19 Misperceptions: Understanding the Role of News and Social Media.” https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/the-causes-and-consequences-of-covid-19-misperceptions-understanding-the-role-of-news-and-social-media/. Access: November 29, 2020.
Caulfield, Michael. 2020. Sifting Through the Pandemic. https://infodemic.blog/
Evanega, Sarah et al. 2020. “Coronavirus misinformation: Quantifying sources and themes in the COVID-19 ‘infodemic.’” Cornell University.

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References

Fairbank, Viviane. The Walrus Fact-Checking Guide.
Ficarra, Barbara. 2020. “Is it Possible to Debunk Pandemic Misinformation?” Q&A with Gary Schwitzwer. Health in 30. https://healthin30.com/2020/11/is-it-possible-to-debunk-pandemic-misinformation/
Helmuth, Laura. 2020. “Tipsheet: Covering the Coronavirus Epidemic Effectively without Spreading Misinformation.” The Open Notebook. https://www.theopennotebook.com/2020/03/02/tipsheet-covering-the-coronavirus-epidemic-effectively-without-spreading-misinformation/
Makamara, Chris. “11 Easy Ways To Spot a Fake Twitter Account Instantly.” https://chrismakara.com/social-media/11-easy-ways-to-spot-a-fake-twitter-account/
Noordzij, Marlies et al. 2017. “Relative risk versus absolute risk: one cannot be interpreted without the other.” Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation, Volume 32, Issue suppl_2, April 2017, Pages ii13–ii18, https://doi.org/10.1093/ndt/gfw465
Posetti, Julie. Bontcheva, Kalina. 2020. “Disinfodemic: Deciphering COVID-19 disinformation.” Policy brief 1. UNESCO. https://en.unesco.org/covid19/disinfodemic/brief1. Access: November 29, 2020.

DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP INITIATIVE: BRIDGING THE MAINSTREAM-ETHNIC DIGITAL DIVIDE IN COVID-19 LITERACY