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 Anna-Sophie Harling, Chine Labbe, Virginia Padovese, Marie Richter, Roberta Schmid, and Katharina Stahlhofen