Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 12, 2025

Remote Laboratory Management: Respiratory Virus Diagnostics
Published on: April 6, 2019
COVID-19 Infodemic: A study on the Fragile Five countries
1Department of Public Relations and Publicity Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences, Istanbul Gelisim University Istanbul Turkey.
Abstract:
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many rumors and conspiracy theories spread in various media outlets. The purpose of this study is to reveal the nature of the misinformation detected by fact check platforms that spread in the Fragile Five countries. To determine the themes of misinformation about COVID-19 and from which media it is disseminated are a possible way to prevent it. The data of the study were obtained from International Fact-checking Network's CoronaVirusFacts database. One thousand seven hundred thirty-four piece of misinformation collected by web scraping method during the period January 24, 2020 to November 14, 2020 and analyzed with MAXQDA Analytics Pro 2020. As a result of the research, it was found that rumors (96.3%) spread more in the Fragile Five countries than conspiracy theories (3.7%). While the main theme of the rumors is about illness (26.9%) and diagnosis-treatment (25%), conspiracy theories are mostly related to the cause of the disease (68.8%). 53.06% of misinformation was spread through the Facebook platform. 15.32% on Twitter; 13.34% on WhatsApp. Misinformation has been heavily false (85.12%) in both rumor and conspiracy theories. In the second place, misleading (10.09%) news spread.
Related Concept Videos
Principles of Disease Surveillance
Steps in Outbreak Investigation
Bias in Epidemiological Studies
Factors Affecting Illness
For instance, risk factors are connected to illness,...
Causality in Epidemiology
Introduction to Epidemiology

