COVID-19-Related Social Media Fake News in India

COVID-19-related online fake news poses a threat to Indian public health. In response, this study seeks to understand the five important features of COVID-19-related social media fake news by analyzing 125 Indian fake news. The analysis produces five major findings based on five research questions. First, the seven themes of fake news are health, religiopolitical, political, crime, entertainment, religious, and miscellaneous. Health-related fake news (67.2%) is on the top of the list that includes medicine, medical and healthcare facilities, viral infection, and doctor-patient issues. Second, the seven types of fake news contents are text, photo, audio, video, text and photo, text and video, and text and photo and video. More fake news takes the form of text and video (47.2%).…