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With the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic came a flood of novel misinformation. Ranging from harmless false cures to dangerous rhetoric targeting minorities, coronavirus-related misinformation spread quickly wherever the virus itself did. Fact-checking organizations around the world took up the charge against misinformation, essentially crowdsourcing the task of debunking false narratives.

Communities of color, suffering equity gaps and disproportionate COVID-19 effects, also must resist ongoing disinformation campaigns designed to impede their political influence. A representative, national survey (N=1264) of adults conducted June-July 2020 found that nonwhite respondents tended to report less COVID-19 knowledge, media literacy, and voting intent than white respondents, but more acceptance of COVID-19 disinformation and for risks associated with protesting for social justice.

Voting is the defining act for a democracy. However, voting is only meaningful if public deliberation is grounded in veritable and equitable information. This essay investigates the politicization of public health practices during the Democratic primaries in the context of the 2020 U.S.

Brazil has one of the highest rates of cases and deaths attributed to Covid-19 in the world. Two factors contributed to the high rates: the Brazilian government underestimated the pandemic and a large amount of disinformation was spread through social media.

This paper studies conspiracy and debunking narratives about the origins of COVID-19 on a major Chinese social media platform, Weibo, from January to April 2020. Popular conspiracies about COVID-19 on Weibo, including that the virus is human-synthesized or a bioweapon, differ substantially from those in the United States.

As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, an understanding of the structure and organization of beliefs in pandemic conspiracy theories and misinformation becomes increasingly critical for addressing the threat posed by these dubious ideas. In polling Americans about beliefs in 11 such ideas, we observed clear groupings of beliefs that correspond with different individual-level characteristics (e.g.,

We analyze original survey data on support for social media companies’ fact-checking of politicians in general and President Trump in particular. We find overwhelming majorities of Democrats support fact-checking in both instances, while a majority of Republicans support fact-checking of politicians in general but not of President Trump.

Health experts worry that a COVID-19 vaccine boycott could inhibit reaching “herd immunity,” and their concerns have only grown as the pandemic has spread. Concern has largely focused on anti-vaccine protestors, who captured headlines as they stood side by side with Tea Party activists and armed militia groups demonstrating against the quarantine in April and May of this year.

Tweets about “plandemic” (e.g., #plandemic)—the notion that the COVID-19 pandemic was planned or fraudulent—helped to spread several distinct conspiracy theories related to COVID-19. But the term’s catchy nature attracted attention from anti-vaccine activist filmmakers who ultimately created Plandemic the 26-minute documentary.