Global misinformation trends: Commonalities and differences in topics, sources of falsehoods, and deception strategies across eight countries

Abstract

In a quantitative content analysis of 3,154 debunking articles from 23 fact-checking organizations, this study examines global misinformation trends and regional nuances across eight countries in Europe and Latin America (UK, DE, PT, SP, AR, BR, CL, and VZ). It strives to elucidate commonalities and differences based on political and media system indicators. Notably, countries with a substantial online presence of far-right parties avoid disclosing (fake) ordinary accounts to evade engaging in inauthentic coordinated actions. While entirely fabricated stories are infrequent, they stand out in Brazil and Spain, the two countries with higher political polarization. Despite variations, aggregated forms of fabrication (invented, manipulated, imposter, or decontextualized content) are more prominent in Latin America due to high social media use for news and low reliance on public media. Conversely, in Europe, countries are more impacted by misleading (cherry-picked, exaggerated, and twisted) information.