A research group from the University of Tokyo Graduate School and the University of Tsukuba investigated the characteristics of the spread of false information about ivermectin during the novel coronavirus pandemic and found that Japanese users are able to spot and widely share misinformation in English independently of English users. It became clear that it was.
Ivermectin has been shown to be an inhibitor of the virus in laboratory settings, but rigorous testing did not demonstrate an association with reduced COVID-19 mortality.However, ivermectin continues to be proposed as a treatment for COVID-19 among some social media users, creating a complex mix of scientific and non-scientific debates and misinformation that greatly impacts public health.
In this study, we used Twitter data from two years from February 2020 to March 2 to compare the topics and influential users of tweets containing ivermectin shared in English and Japanese.We investigated the characteristics of information diffusion through multilingual analysis.
As a result, measurements focusing on retweets showed that influential users (influencers) tend to consistently maintain their influence.In particular, a strong community was formed among Japanese users, centered around influencers.In addition, misinformation in English was more likely to spread among Japanese users, and was particularly widely shared by influencers.
Furthermore, rather than observing English Twitter and introducing popular English misinformation in Japanese, Japanese influencers are directly catching up on English misinformation, sometimes ahead of English users in Japanese. It became clear that they were presenting incorrect information.
This research shows the importance of cross-linguistic measures when countering misinformation, and states that it is necessary to consider countermeasures that transcend linguistic boundaries.
Paper information:[Scientific Reports] A cross-lingual analysis on the spread of misinformation using the case ofIvermectin as a treatment for Covid-19
