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Media captionWho starts viral misinformation… and who spreads it?
Conspiracy theories, misinformation and speculation about coronavirus have flooded social media. But who starts these rumours? And who spreads them?
We’ve investigated hundreds of misleading stories during the pandemic. It’s given us an idea about who is behind misinformation – and what motivates them. Here are seven types of people who start and spread falsehoods:
You’d hope no-one was fooled by a WhatsApp voice note claiming the government was cooking a giant lasagne in Wembley stadium to feed Londoners. But some people didn’t get the joke.
To take a slightly more serious example, a prankster created a screenshot of a fake government text that claimed the recipient had been fined for leaving the house too many times. He thought it would be funny to scare people breaking lockdown rules.
After encouraging his followers to share it on Instagram, it found its way to local Facebook groups, where it was posted by worried residents, some of whom took it seriously.