new report on sharing of COVID misinformation on Twitter

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david lazer

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Oct 21, 2020, 6:02:00 AM10/21/20
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Check out our latest report and our interactive dashboard, examining the prevalence of COVID misinformation on Twitter. This is based on tweets collected between January 1 and September 30, 2020 from over half a million registered American voters.

Our main findings:


  • Most of the tweeted links were to reliable websites, but just over 1% were to sites we identify as fake news publishers.  

  • Republicans and older people were more likely to share links from fake news sites. 

  • Despite being more likely to share COVID-19 fake news, older people are actually more informed than younger people on the topic.

  • The Gateway Pundit is by far the most shared website that publishes fake news and is among the most shared websites overall.


You can explore these data yourself using our interactive dashboard.This dataset can be analyzed by the top links, domains, and keywords extracted from tweets:


  • Top links displays the most shared links such as news stories

  • Top domains showcases the most shared sites such as "cnn.com"

  • Top keywords features the most frequently occurring words such as "pandemic"


Filter the top links either at the national level or for a specific state, as well as by month.  For instance, apply filters to answer the question: What links were shared most often by Ohio residents in April?  In the top domains section, there is the option to drill down further by two demographic attributes: by age group and by political party affiliation.  In the top keywords section, explore how popular keywords trend over time.


For additional details about this data collection, methodology, and research reports please read the “COVID-19 Fake News Sharing on Twitter” report and visit the dashboard.   For additional information and press requests, contact David Lazer at d.l...@neu.edu, Katherine Ognyanova at katya.o...@rutgers.edu, and Matthew A. Baum at matthe...@hks.harvard.edu.   

This is a product of The COVID-19 Consortium for Understanding the Public’s Policy Preferences Across States, a collaboration of scholars at Northeastern University, Harvard University, Rutgers University, and Northwestern University.


David Lazer

University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Computer and Information Science, Northeastern University
Co-Director, NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks
Visiting Scholar, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University

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