Novelty in News Search: A Longitudinal Study of the 2020 US Elections.

The 2020 US elections news coverage was extensive, with new pieces of information generated rapidly. This evolving scenario presented an opportunity to study the performance of search engines in a context in which they had to quickly process information as it was published. We analyze novelty, a measurement of new items that emerge in the top news search results, to compare the coverage and visibility of different topics. Using virtual agents that simulate human web browsing behavior to collect search engine result pages, we conduct a longitudinal study of news results of five search engines collected in short bursts (every 21 minutes) from two regions (Oregon, US and Frankfurt, Germany), starting on election day and lasting until one day after the announcement of Biden as the winner. We find more new items emerging for election related queries ("joe biden," "donald trump," and "us elections") compared to topical (e.g., "coronavirus") or stable (e.g., "holocaust") queries. We demonstrate that our method captures sudden changes in highly covered news topics as well as multiple differences across search engines and regions over time. We highlight novelty imbalances between candidate queries which affect their visibility during electoral periods, and conclude that, when it comes to news, search engines are responsible for such imbalances, either due to their algorithms or the set of news sources that they rely on.

Misinformation, believability, and vaccine acceptance over 40 countries: Takeaways from the initial phase of the COVID-19 infodemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been damaging to the lives of people all around the world. Accompanied by the pandemic is an infodemic, an abundant and uncontrolled spread of potentially harmful misinformation. The infodemic may severely change the pandemic's course by interfering with public health interventions such as wearing masks, social distancing, and vaccination. In particular, the impact of the infodemic on vaccination is critical because it holds the key to reverting to pre-pandemic normalcy. This paper presents findings from a global survey on the extent of worldwide exposure to the COVID-19 infodemic, assesses different populations' susceptibility to false claims, and analyzes its association with vaccine acceptance. Based on responses gathered from over 18,400 individuals from 40 countries, we find a strong association between perceived believability of COVID-19 misinformation and vaccination hesitancy. Our study shows that only half of the online users exposed to rumors might have seen corresponding fact-checked information. Moreover, depending on the country, between 6% and 37% of individuals considered these rumors believable. A key finding of this research is that poorer regions were more susceptible to encountering and believing COVID-19 misinformation; countries with lower gross domestic product (GDP) per capita showed a substantially higher prevalence of misinformation. We discuss implications of our findings to public campaigns that proactively spread accurate information to countries that are more susceptible to the infodemic. We also defend that fact-checking platforms should prioritize claims that not only have wide exposure but are also perceived to be believable. Our findings give insights into how to successfully handle risk communication during the initial phase of a future pandemic.

Prevalence of Misinformation and Factchecks on the COVID-19 Pandemic in 35 Countries: Observational Infodemiology Study.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by an infodemic, in which a plethora of false information has been rapidly disseminated online, leading to serious harm worldwide. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to analyze the prevalence of common misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: We conducted an online survey via social media platforms and a survey company to determine whether respondents have been exposed to a broad set of false claims and fact-checked information on the disease. RESULTS: We obtained more than 41,000 responses from 1257 participants in 85 countries, but for our analysis, we only included responses from 35 countries that had at least 15 respondents. We identified a strong negative correlation between a country's Gross Domestic Product per-capita and the prevalence of misinformation, with poorer countries having a higher prevalence of misinformation (Spearman ρ=-0.72; P<.001). We also found that fact checks spread to a lesser degree than their respective false claims, following a sublinear trend (ß=.64). CONCLUSIONS: Our results imply that the potential harm of misinformation could be more substantial for low-income countries than high-income countries. Countries with poor infrastructures might have to combat not only the spreading pandemic but also the COVID-19 infodemic, which can derail efforts in saving lives.