New Delhi: India generates the maximum amount of misinformation on Covid-19 across the world, according to a new study.
A researcher from the University of Alberta in Canada, Md. Sayeed Al-Zaman, analysed 9,657 pieces of misinformation on coronavirus originating from 138 countries for his study.
He found that 18.07 per cent of them were from India, the highest among all countries.
Furthermore, India was also featured among the top four countries most affected by misinformation at 15.94 per cent, followed by the US (9.07 per cent) , Brazil (8.57 per cent) and Spain (8.03 per cent)
“I suspect that the weak information and communication infrastructure, less (digital) information literacy and information awareness among people could be the prime reasons for higher Covid misinformation in India,” Al-Zaman told The Times of India.
“Misleading information surges when a crisis first appears and reliable data isn’t readily available,” he added.
Titled ‘Prevalence and source analysis of COVID-19 misinformation in 138 countries’, the study was published in Sage’s International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions journal on 27 August.
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Social media and misinformation
According to the study, social media contributed to 84.94 per cent of the misinformation analysed while the internet as a whole contributed to 90.5 per cent of it.
Meanwhile, Facebook produced 66.87 per cent of misinformation.
The data for the study was collected from the International Fact-Checking Network website, a unit of the US-based research organisation Poynter.
The 9,657 pieces of misinformation analysed by Al-Zaman were also fact-checked by 94 organisations.
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