The @AP collaborated with The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (@DFRLab) on a 9-month project to identify those who spread misinformation about the origins of the coronavirus.
Here’s what we found.http://apne.ws/9OXcT7a
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Rumors that the coronavirus was engineered appeared immediately on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. Within three months, they had taken root in millions of people’s minds.
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The chaos was, in part, manufactured,
@AP and@DFRLab found in a nine-month analysis of millions of social posts and articles. Leaders and allied media in China, Russia, Iran and the U.S. were superspreaders of politically expedient conspiracy theories.http://apne.ws/k7WSzfUShow this thread -
At first, China worked to contain COVID conspiracy theories. But after weeks of fiery rhetoric from President Trump and top Republicans, Beijing fought back. China launched what may be its first truly global digital disinfo campaign.pic.twitter.com/sMyp6rkroO
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Tweets by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, which broadcast speculation that the U.S. Army engineered COVID-19, was cited over 99,000 times, in at least 54 languages, by accounts with hundreds of millions of followers. Then Chinese state media syndicated his ideas.
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During the first half of 2020, there were millions of coronavirus-related interactions on Twitter with 829 accounts linked to the Chinese, Russian and Iranian governments. Chinese state media and Foreign Ministry accounts were among the most retweeted.
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China’s foreign ministry says it resolutely rejects disinformation, but will defend itself against the aggression of hostile forces seeking to politicize the epidemic.https://apnews.com/article/pandemics-beijing-only-on-ap-epidemics-media-122b73e134b780919cc1808f3f6f16e8 …
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Learn more about some of the people and groups behind some of the most viral misinformation about the origins of the coronavirus, as identified in a 9-month investigation by
@AP and@DFRLab.https://apnews.com/article/conspiracy-theories-iran-only-on-ap-media-misinformation-bfca6d5b236a29d61c4dd38702495ffe …Show this thread
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China is basically just a new and updated form of the USSR. It is a dictatorship that is fully involved in disinformation, and jails anyone who has a dissenting idea.
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God the US propaganda runs deep
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