Impact of political discourse on the dissemination of hoaxes about covid-19. Influence of misinformation in public and media

Abstract

Introduction: The information disorder generated by Covid-19 paints a strategic scenario for the dissemination of the fallacy and political propaganda. Social networks, in eco-chamber mode, reproduce the government’s discourse of confusion and lie and favor a climate of destabilizing disinformation in democracies. In parallel, digital audiences are installed as prosumers of the political hoax on Twitter and a tendency of the media to combat fake news is seen. Methodology: The main objective is to know which disinformation brands identify the leader's message, what role audiences play in the production and dissemination of the false and what verification processes are carried out by fact-checking agencies (Pagella Politica, Maldito Bulo, Full Fact and PolitiFact) and the media (La Repubblica, El País, The Guardian and The New York Times) in favor of the reliability of the public in a situation of maximum risk. On a sample composed of tweets published by the presidents of government (n = 272), news related to Covid-19 (n1 = 4,543) and hoaxes detected on Twitter (n1 = 200), we designed a methodology for quantitative-qualitative content analysis and critical analysis of political discourse. SPSS applied statistics software is used. Results, discussion and conclusions: The results reveal the prominence of a fallacious political language, which favors the production of hoaxes on the Internet and requires the effectiveness of the fact-checking system of international agencies and the media, to combat the false, always, and more if possible in moments of an unprecedented health pandemic.