THREAD: As the world battled the coronavirus last year, China was waging another struggle online: pushing the idea that the virus was a U.S.-made bioweapon.
Read more from @AP’s @ekinetz: http://apne.ws/xI9gzhB pic.twitter.com/6eSko0A89N
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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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Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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