Table 2
Study characteristics, literature review of COVID-19-related misinformation on social media, 2020
| Study reference | Study design | Study period | GRADE score, pointsa | Type of social media studied | Social media or population sample | Type of misinformation reported | Reported effect of misinformation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wahbeh et al.28 | Cross-sectional | 123 days (1 Dec 2019 to 1 Apr 2020) | 2 | 10 096 tweets | Misinformation in general | NR | |
| Rufai and Bunce24 | Cross-sectional | 122 days (17 Nov 2019 to 17 Mar 2020) | 2 | 203 viral tweets from leaders of the G7 countries that had more than 500 likesb | Misinformation in general | NR | |
| Kudchadkar and Carroll16 | Cross-sectional | 91 days (1 Feb to 1 May 2020) | 2 | 49 865 tweets | Misinformation in general | NR | |
| Sharov26 | Social media content analysis and survey | 70 days (2 Mar to 10 May 2020) | 2 | Several, including VKontakte, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Odnoklassniki | 3164 social media accounts and 903 survey respondents | Parallels drawn between COVID-19 and a possible Third World War, characterized by: (i) heaps of coffins; (ii) mass burials and overloaded crematoria; (iii) medical personnel wearing spaceman-like, anti-plague, protective medical clothing with gas masks; (iv) empty streets; and (v) closed or empty places of worship | (i) Fear; (ii) panic; (iii) misallocation of resources; (iv) stress experienced by health-care workers; and (v) “overheating of health-care sector” |
| Salaverría et al.25 | Cross-sectional | 31 days (14 Mar to 13 Apr 2020) | 2 | Several | 292 hoaxes reported on certified platformsc | False health recommendations (e.g. alkaline diet or drinking wine), falsehoods related to health management, hoaxes falsely attributed to public health institutions and rumours about science and the origin of the coronavirus | NR |
| Subedi et al.27 | Survey and focus group | 27 days (27 Feb to 24 Mar 2020) | 2 | Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube | 85 medical and dental interns | Misinformation in general | (i) Fear; and (ii) a man died and his wife was in a critical condition after they ingested chloroquine |
| Chesser et al.12 | Survey | 18 days (13–31 Mar 2020) | 1 | Several, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat | 1136 survey respondents | Misinformation in general | NR |
| Gebbia et al.13 | Cross-sectional | 15 days (8–22 Mar 2020) | 1 | 446 cancer patients | Misinformation in general | NR | |
| Pérez-Dasilva et al.21 | Cross-sectional | 14 days (28 Feb to 12 Mar 2020) | 2 | 34 505 social media users and 37 362 of their interactions with other users | A media war between Republicans and Democrats in the United States that used COVID-19 as a story line | NR | |
| Jimenez-Sotomayor et al.5 | Cross-sectional | 10 days (12–21 Mar 2020) | 1 | 351 tweets | Misinformation in general | NR | |
| Kawchuk et al.14 | Cross-sectional | 8 days (24–31 Mar 2020) | 2 | 1350 social media users, including website users | Effect of chiropractic treatment on specific conditions, including pregnancy and immune responses (e.g. in COVID-19) | NR | |
| Ahmed et al.2 | Cross-sectional | 8 days (27 Mar to 4 Apr 2020) | 1 | 2328 tweets | Conspiracy theory about the connection between 5G antennae and COVID-19 | NR | |
| Masip et al.17 | Survey | 8 days (3–10 Apr 2020) | 2 | Social media in general | 1122 survey respondents | Misinformation in general | NR |
| Mustafa et al.20 | Cross-sectional | 7 days (13–19 Apr 2020) | 1 | 212 846 tweets | Sarcasm and humour related to COVID-19 | NR | |
| Mejia et al.18 | Survey | 6 days (15–20 Mar 2020) | 2 | Social media in general | 4009 survey respondents | Social media exaggerates the severity of COVID-19 | Fear of COVID-19 (16% of respondents strongly agreed and 25% agreed) |
| Morinha and Magalhaes19 | Survey | 6 days (23–28 Mar 2020) | 1 | 1198 survey respondents | Although the true origin of SARS-CoV-2 is still unknown, there were suggestions: (i) that it originated in bats or pangolins; (ii) that animal-to-human transmission occurred outside China; and (iii) that the virus emerged through laboratory manipulation | NR | |
| Aker and Mıdık11 | Survey | 3 days (24–27 Mar 2020) | 1 | Several, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp | 1375 medical students | Misinformation in general | NR |
| Pulido et al.22 | Cross-sectional | 2 days (6–7 Feb 2020) | 1 | 942 tweets | Suggestion that SARS-CoV-2 is a biological weapon and videos of people suddenly collapsing or having a seizure | NR | |
| Pulido Rodríguez et al.23 | Cross-sectional | 2 days (6–7 Feb 2020) | 1 | Weibo and Twitter | 1923 posts on Weibo and 1923 tweets | (i) Unproven treatments against COVID-19; (ii) pandemic as biochemical warfare; (iii) COVID-19 is a bioweapon or serves the interests of pharmaceutical companies; (iv) official information discredited; (v) false accounts of infection cases; and (vi) false information about the differences between COVID-19, flu and the common cold | NR |
| Yuksel and Cakmak29 | Cross-sectional | 1 day (1 May 2020) | 1 | YouTube | 76 YouTube videos | Misinformation in general | NR |
| Ahmad and Murad10 | Survey and social media content analysis | Not specified | 2 | Several, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and TikTok | 516 social media users | Misinformation in general | Panic (26.6% of participants stated that, of all forms of information, false news about COVID-19 on social media created the greatest amount of panic) |
| Kouzy et al.15 | Cross-sectional | Not specified | 1 | 673 tweets with more than five retweets | Humorous and non-serious comments | NR |
COVID-19: coronavirus disease 2019; GRADE: grading of recommendations assessment, development and evaluation; NR: not reported; SARS-CoV-2: severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.
a Studies awarded 1 or 2 points using GRADE criteria are regarded as being of low quality; randomized trials provide the highest quality of evidence.
b The 203 tweets were posted on the verified accounts of Shinzo Abe, Giuseppe Conte, Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Charles Michel, Justin Trudeau, Donald Trump and Ursula von der Leyen; the G7 countries are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America.
c The certified platforms were the Spanish accredited fact-checking platforms Maldita.es, Newtral and EFE Verifica.