During the first months of the pandemic, Maldita.es focused its fact-checking work on new disinformation about the virus, detecting between March and April 2020 an average of 5.3 hoaxes about COVID-19 per day. In the report, Maldita.es analyzed disinformation on three topics: COVID-19, climate change and gender-based violence, investigating the evolution of hoaxes from January 1, 2019 to January 1, 2021. In this period, the outbreak of the coronavirus health crisis proved decisive by shifting society’s attention toward the evolution of the disease, increasing the virality of hoaxes about the pandemic.
In this interactive graph you can consult the debunks by topic and date to see their evolution.
Hoaxes about gender-based violence decreased by 16.6% with the arrival of the pandemic
The research concludes that in 10 months (March to December 2020) nearly 800 disinformation items about COVID-19 were recorded, hoaxes about gender-based violence decreased by 16.6% since the beginning of the pandemic, and since March 2020 only 3 disinformation items about climate change were recorded. The research methodology involved the selection of hoaxes and other types of disinformation on the three topics in headlines such as “False claims” or “What we know about,” published in Maldita.es during the period studied.
The growth of hate speech and denialism, often fueled by disinformation, highlights the need to provide citizens with tools to combat hoaxes. In order to promote media literacy, the report includes educational resources to identify and combat hate speech and disinformation with tools in analog and digital formats. You can consult all the resources, along with the full research, on the website: https://noloniegues.intered.org/.
The study was prepared in collaboration with InteRed with the financial support of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID). The presentation of the report “Disinformation and denialist discourses on gender-based violence, climate change and COVID-19 in Spain. Tools to identify and debunk them” took place on September 21 at the Asociación de la Prensa de Madrid, you can watch it on YouTube: