Cornell study indicates Trump is the biggest driver of coronavirus misinformation

[Stevicus]

Cornell study: Trump is biggest source of coronavirus misinformation

President Donald Trump is the biggest individual source of coronavirus misinformation in the world, according to a new study at Cornell University.

The New York Times reports Cornell researchers analyzed 38 million articles about the Covid-19 article in English-language media around the world. Mentions of Trump accounted for 37.9% of the overall “misinformation conversation,” making him the largest driver of the “infodemic,” they concluded.

Apparently, this was the first comprehensive study regarding coronavirus misinformation in the media.

“The biggest surprise was that the president of the United States was the single largest driver of misinformation around Covid,” Cornell Alliance for Science director Sarah Evanega, the study’s lead author, told the Times. “That’s concerning in that there are real-world dire health implications.”


Even more concerning, researchers found only 16.4% of the misinformation was “fact checking” in nature, suggesting that the majority of the falsehoods were conveyed without question or correction.


The study, released Thursday, is the first comprehensive examination of coronavirus misinformation in traditional and online media.

The study covered 11 different areas of misinformation:

The Times reports researchers identified 11 main topics of misinformation, including conspiracy theories claiming the pandemic was manufactured by Democrats or that the initial outbreak in Wuhan, China, was linked to people eating bat soup. Bill Gates, 5G, “Plandemic” and population control were also frequent topics; Cornell alum Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was accused of benefitting from pharmaceutical companies working on treatments and vaccines.

I didn't know Dr. Fauci went to Cornell.

But the biggest topic was “miracle cures,” including Trump’s comments about anti-malarial drugs and disinfectants as potential treatments, which accounted for more misinformation than the other 10 topics combined. Trump continued promoting hydroxychloroquine even after numerous studies showed it was not an effective treatment for Covid-19 and the FDA withdrew an order that allowed the drug’s use as a emergency treatment.

In April, when Trump suggested ingesting disinfectants to treat the coronavirus, a spike in calls to a New York poison control center followed and two people in Georgia drank liquid cleaning products in an attempt to fight Covid-19, according to the Georgia Poison Center.

 

[Terry Sampson]

Neat! Finally we have evidence that he's better at doing something than anyone else.

 

[Secret Chief]

Truly, then, a world leader.

 

[pearl]

It could have been so different, this did not have to happen on so large a scale.

 

[stvdv]

Apparently, this was the first comprehensive study regarding coronavirus misinformation in the media.

I mentioned it already twice on RF, I knew it without doing comprehensive study, just common sense + listening to Trump

 

[ChristineM]

This would be brilliantly funny if so many people had not died of his incompetence