Towards Evaluating the COVID'19 related Fake News Problem: Case of Morocco

Abstract

Nowadays social media play an important role in our societies. In fact, they remain one of the most commonly used means to easily obtain information online. However, social media can also be a catalyst for the proliferation of fake news around the world, especially in times of crisis where massive misinformation can have serious consequences. In particular, fake news about the COVID'19, as the virus spreads, leads to an infodemic of misinformation, hence the need for news verification mechanisms in social media. In this paper, we approach the problem of fake news related to COVID'19 as a global pandemic with a significant impact on various sectors. We also provide an aggregation system to detect and analyze fake news related to the COVID'19 pandemic in the Moroccan context based on data sets scrapped from Facebook.