The evolution of rumors on a closed platform during COVID-19.

Wang, Andrea W; Lan, Jo-Yu; Wang, Ming-Hung; Yu, Chihhao

BACKGROUND In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic put the world in crisis on both physical and psychological health. Simultaneously, a myriad of unverified information flowed on social media and online outlets. The situation was so severe that the World Health Organization identified it as an infodemic in February 2020. OBJECTIVE We want to study the propagation patterns and textual transformation of COVID-19 related rumors on a closed-platform. METHODS We obtained a dataset of suspicious text messages collected on Taiwan's most popular instant messaging platform, LINE, between January and July 2020. We proposed a Classification-based Clustering algorithm that could efficiently cluster messages into groups, with each group representing a rumor. For ease of understanding, a group is referred to as a "rumor group". Messages in a rumor group could be identical or within limited textual differences with one another. Therefore, each message in a rumor group is a form of the rumor. RESULTS A total of 936 rumor groups with at least 10 messages were discovered among 114,124 text messages collected from LINE. Among 936 rumors, 396 (42.3%) were related to COVID-19. Of 396 COVID-related rumors, 134 (33.8%) had been fact-checked by IFCN-certified agencies in Taiwan to be false or misleading. Studying the prevalence of Simplified Chinese characters or phrases that originated in China in the messages, we found that COVID-related messages, compared to non-COVID-related messages, were more likely to have been written by non-Taiwanese. The association was statistically significant with p < .01 by the chi-squared independence test. The qualitative investigations of the 3 most popular COVID-19 rumors revealed that key authoritative figures, mostly medical personnel, were often misquoted in the messages. In addition, these rumors resurfaced multiple times after being fact-checked, usually preceded by major societal events or textual transformations. CONCLUSIONS To fight infodemic, it is crucial that we first understand why and how a rumor becomes popular. While social media gives rise to an unprecedented number of unverified rumors, it also provides a unique opportunity for us to study rumor propagations and the interactions with society. Therefore, we must put more effort in the areas. CLINICALTRIAL