The Analysis of Misleading Information on Covid-19 Posted on Facebook
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33102/uij.vol33noS5.405Keywords:
Facebook, COVID-19, social media, new media, fake newsAbstract
The elegance of technology has various impacts on the life cycle of today's society. From a positive point of view, every activity can be done via various existing media including new media. However, the use of modern technology without control will also cause problems in society. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the spread of fake news has increased since day 1. To combat this negative and ill situation, the official page Sebenarnya.my has been created on Facebook to help society identify fake news. The page would repost all the fake news pertaining to the Covid-19 pandemic, or anything related and identify the number of shares made by Facebook users on that fake news. Thus, this study was conducted to identify the number of shares by Facebook users as identified and posted on Sebenarnya.my Facebook page and to investigate the dominant themes of the fake news spread. Content analysis was conducted to answer the objectives of the study. A total of 50 fake news postings on March, April, and May 2020 on the Sebenarnya.my Facebook page were selected. The findings showed various amounts of fake news posting within three months. Similarly, the percentage data for sharing by Facebook users recorded different amounts. Finally, few themes were identified to be the most dominant ones of fake news related to the COVID-19 issue that were posted by netizens.
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Copyright (c) 2021 Sofia Hayati Yusoff, Fatin Nur Aqilah Isa, Fauziah Hassan
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