PLOS One has published a study noting that the spread of COVID-related and other misinformation on social media varies by topic and by country in Europe.
The study was conducted by analyzing news activity on Twitter (now X) in France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom from 2019 to 2021, noting misinformation on major news topics including Brexit, coronavirus, and COVID-19 vaccines.
News sources cited were rated as either "reliable" or "questionable" based on their NewsGuard scores, which measure nine journalistic criteria, assigning outlets a reliability score out of 100.
Rate of questionable news highest in German
The authors found the United Kingdom maintained a relatively stable proportion between questionable and reliable retweets across different topics. Germany, on the other hand, had the highest ratio of questionable news retweets on each of the three topics analyzed, followed by France.
"Our findings indicated that reliable sources dominate the information landscape, but users consuming content mainly or exclusively from questionable news outlets were often present," the authors concluded.
The authors also said monitoring news consumption by country rather than continental region would be useful for any efforts looking to combat misinformation.
Monitoring the information landscape at both national and European levels is indeed crucial to understanding the state of public discourse on contentious topics.
"Monitoring the information landscape at both national and European levels is indeed crucial to understanding the state of public discourse on contentious topics and detecting the emergence of new and divisive narratives within the European context," they said.