Science For All? Relating Actors, Links, and Discourses with (Fake) Scientific Claims About COVID-19 on Twitter

Abstract

Background: This article looks at discourses using alleged scientific sources to support or oppose political positions on the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. Analysis: The authors analyzed more than 3.3 million tweets, sorted according to linguistic rules, from a broader database of tweets related to the pandemic. The focus of this analysis was tweets containing affirmations, allusions, or questionings allegedly referring to scientific studies and hypotheses or authoritative sources in order to legitimize a position as being based on scientific truth. Conclusion and implication: The study shows that scientific sources are largely mobilized in networks of information and disinformation and are heavily present in a vast proportion of anti-science and negationist arguments.