Characterizing the roles of bots on Twitter during the COVID-19 infodemic.

ABSTRACT: An infodemic is an emerging phenomenon caused by an overabundance of information online. This proliferation of information makes it difficult for the public to distinguish trustworthy news and credible information from untrustworthy sites and non-credible sources. The perils of an infodemic debuted with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and bots (i.e., automated accounts controlled by a set of algorithms) that are suspected of spreading the infodemic. Although previous research has revealed that bots played a central role in spreading misinformation during major political events, how bots behavior during the infodemic is unclear. In this paper, we examined the roles of bots in the case of the COVID-19 infodemic and the diffusion of non-credible information such as "5G" and "Bill Gates"

SUBMITTER: Xu W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8403696 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature