## Content This morning (15th September 2021) TOI ran a [story](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/india-worlds-top-source-of-misinfo-on-covid-19-study/articleshow/86218258.cms) with the headline *"India world’s top source of misinfo on Covid-19: Study"*. And the first paragraph carried the line (emphasis added): > Over a year and a half into the pandemic, India has emerged **as the biggest source of Covid misinformation**, with one in six pieces of fake information coming out of the country, a new study has found. Here is a [link](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.08.21256879v1) to the study being referenced, whose abstract states (emphasis added): > This study analyzed 9,657 pieces of misinformation that originated in 138 countries and fact-checked by 94 organizations. Collected from Poynter Institute’s official website and following a quantitative content analysis method along with descriptive statistical analysis, this research produces some novel insights regarding COVID-19 misinformation. **The findings show that India (15.94%), the US (9.74%), Brazil (8.57%), and Spain (8.03%) are the four most misinformation-affected countries.** *(I have other issues with the study, for e.g. it doesn't state anywhere that only unique pieces of misleading information were considered, or how they went about eliminating duplicates, but I'll set that aside for now)* ~~There is a significant difference between "most affected" and "world's top source".~~ ###### Update 2021-09-27 I stand partially corrected here. The report did actually state the following on page 5: > Of all countries, India produced the highest amount of social media misinformation (18.07%), followed by Brazil (9.17%) and the US (8.61%). This does, however, make the rest of this post even more important since the points I've raised here still stand - and should potentially have been raised with the authors of the study. Some sentences now seem out of place though. So I have retained them but marked them as being ~~struck off~~. **End of update** In fact, the database the abstract refers to, tags a country to a fact-checked item if it is referenced, not only if it is a 'source'. As far as I can tell, it doesn't even attribute a country as a source. And since the study relied on scraping the database - we can assume the author did not have any additional information that lead to this kind of attribution: > We collected these data using Web Scraper, an automated scraping extension for web browsers (see more http://webscraper.io). In this automated web scraping, we extracted the claims of misinformation, fact-checkers, sources, dates, countries, types of claims, and explanations of misinformation. ![[Pasted image 20210915180853.png]] In this [example](https://www.poynter.org/?ifcn_misinformation=india-controlled-the-pandemic-after-suspending-vaccination-and-adopting-ivermectin-as-a-treatment-for-covid-19) - both Brazil and India are referenced. However the misleading information did not originate in India, it only referenced it. India is frequently referenced in antivax narratives. But there's more to consider about the database itself - 1. The database includes instances that are already "fact-checked". 2. [The IFCN code](https://www.ifcncodeofprinciples.poynter.org/signatories) has 92 active signatories, of which 15 are from India. And while they don't restrict themselves to addressing misleading information from India only, that likely forms a significant portion of their output. AFAIK, no other country has as many. 3. The ['CoronaVirusFacts' Alliance](https://www.poynter.org/ifcn-covid-19-misinformation/?covid_countries=0&covid_rating=0&covid_fact_checkers=0) has [99 participants](https://www.poynter.org/coronavirusfactsalliance/) and I counted 9/10 from India. 4. Outside the top 4, no other country in the top 10 has more than 2 fact-checking organisations that are signatories. This means there is a possibility that the countries that were the "most-affected" also happened to be ones that were the most represented in the database because: 1. They were referenced more frequently than others. 2. There are more organisations that are debunking misleading information. ~~Again, note the absence of any reference to countries being a source.~~ None of this is to downplay the prevalence of misleading information in India's information ecosystem. In fact, it is to do with the role of a very significant actor in it - news media. This is important context that should have been included in any reporting on the topic, otherwise we're misstating the problem. And subsequently, likely to misdiagnose it. ~~There's a line between simplification and over-simplification.~~ In the information ecosystem where ***information is cheap and knowledge is expensive*** ([to quote Joan Donovan](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/these-disinformation-researchers-saw-coronavirus-infodemic-coming-n1206911)), providing this context is where the future value-add for journalistic efforts will lie. Contextualise and simplify - don't over simplify. *P.S. This is not about any individual journalist and is something I've frequently seen with reporting of academic studies across formats, around the world.* ## Related [[Rethinking role of news media in the information ecosystem]] [[Rethinking Goals of participants in the information ecosystem]] ## Colophon %% title:: 15 September - Misinfo Study type:: [[output]] tags:: url:: file:: %% status:: [[brewing]] created:: 2021-09-15