Reports to Governments and WHO
NewsGuard’s Reports to Governments and the World Health Organization
In August 2020, NewsGuard announced a partnership with the World Health Organization to combat online misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines. Since then, NewsGuard has sent the WHO a variety of reports and data highlighting trending health hoaxes and conspiracies across Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, which the WHO has been able to share with digital platforms to alert them to misinformation and hoaxes on their platforms. These reports identify large social media pages, accounts, and public and private groups that encourage the spread of false and often dangerous narratives about the virus and vaccines.
The pages, groups, and accounts identified in the most recent WHO reports presented here were identified by NewsGuard in various ways: by tracking the spread of NewsGuard Red-rated websites within these groups or posted by pages or accounts; by identifying social media actors repeating false narratives catalogued in NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprint database; or by clicking through the platforms’ own suggestions to users about which groups and pages to follow.
These reports for the WHO demonstrate how social media environments, despite their efforts to control dangerous healthcare hoaxes, continue to overload users with false misinformation about masks, vaccines, and the virus itself.
Below are our highlights from our most recent reports. As we continue to prepare these reports, they will be posted here.
—Eric Effron, Editorial Director
NewsGuard Reports to Governments and WHO:
By Lorenzo Arvanitis, Alex Cadier, Anna-Sophie Harling, Chine Labbe, Edward O’Reilly, Virginia Padovese, Giulia Pozzi, Marie Richter, Roberta Schmid, Katharina Stahlhofen, Louise Vallee, Sara Badlini, Eleonora Francica, Sophia Tewa, and Leonia Pfaller
- Health misinformation on TikTok (Oct. 28, 2022)
- Monkeypox misinformation on social media – and the main myths that are being spread (June 27, 2022)
- COVID-19 vaccine misinformation targeting children, teenagers and parents on social media (February 17, 2022)
- Google, Bing, Qwant, DuckDuckGo: COVID-19 search results (December 16, 2021)
- Despite NewsGuard’s prior warnings in reports to the WHO, Facebook and Instagram have allowed known anti-vaccine misinformation superspreaders to flourish on their platforms (October 28, 2021)
- How the German federal election has fueled COVID-19 misinformation online (October 7, 2021)
- I. Examples of Facebook Recommending AntiVaccine Misinformation Pages to Users
II. COVID-19 and Vaccine Misinformation Groups and Pages on Facebook (July 20, 2021) - COVID-19 and Vaccine Misinformation Accounts on Instagram (June 22, 2021)
- COVID-19 and Vaccine Misinformation Groups and Pages on Facebook (June 22, 2021)
- COVID-19 and Vaccine Misinformation on TikTok (June 18, 2021)
- New COVID-19 and Vaccine Misinformation Narratives (June 18, 2021)
- COVID-19 and Vaccine Misinformation Accounts on Instagram (April 20, 2021)
- COVID-19 and Vaccine Misinformation Accounts on YouTube: English, French, Italian, German (April 20, 2021)
- COVID-19 and Vaccine Misinformation Accounts on Twitter: French, Italian, German (April 20, 2021)
- Bing Update: COVID-19/Vaccine Search Results (April 8, 2021)
- Bing vs. Google: COVID-19 and vaccine search results (April 8, 2021)
- Germany Search Engine Comparison: Google vs. Bing, Ecosia, and DuckDuckGo (April 8, 2021)
- Facebook Groups and Pages: COVID-19 and Vaccine Misinformation (April 5, 2021)
- Qwant / Google / Bing / DuckDuckGo (March 12, 2021)
- Qwant / Google / Bing / DuckDuckGo (March 5, 2021)
- Facebook/Instagram Antivax SuperSpreaders Reaching 3 Million (February 2, 2021)
- WHO Report COVID-19/Vaccine Misinformationon Microsoft’s Bing (January 11, 2021)
- COVID-19/Vaccine Misinformation on Twitter (December 28, 2020)
- COVID-19/vaccine misinformation on Instagram (December 17, 2020)
- COVID-19/vaccine misinformation on TikTok (December 17, 2020)
- More Facebook Misinformation (October 5, 2020)
- Facebook Groups and Pages COVID-19 and Vaccine Misinformation (October 5, 2020)
- COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation On Instagram (September 29, 2020)
- Vaccine misinformation narratives on social media (September 23, 2020)
- COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation on Instagram: Part 1 (September 22, 2020)
- COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation on Instagram: Part 2 (September 22, 2020)
- COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation in Facebook Groups (September 22, 2020)