JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The COVID-19 pandemic gave rise to a global “infodemic” in which social media platforms amplified misinformation. Despite high social media adoption rates and heavy reliance on social media for pandemic news in Arab-speaking countries, relatively little is known about the prevalence and characteristics of online Arabic COVID-19 misinformation.

Objective:

To capture and analyze a snapshot of the COVID-19 misinformation ecosystem in Arabic, identifying characteristics and patterns to guide future research and interventions of particular benefit to this linguistic region.

Methods:

We compiled a database of 234 COVID-19 misinformation claims published online from March 2020 to March 2022, sourced from four International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN)-certified Arabic fact-checking organizations. Claims were coded inductively and deductively with high inter-rater reliability, to determine misinformation type (κ = 0.88), narrative typology (κ = 0.913), framing strategies (κ = 0.72), medical jargon usage (κ = 0.794), and societal implications (κ = 0.752). All Cohen's kappa coefficients were significant at p < 0.001.

Results:

Facebook was the most popular platform, followed by Twitter, with regular users being the primary source of debunked claims. The most prevalent narrative typologies were COVID-19 biological aspects (origins, existence, diagnosis, prevention, transmission, and cures) (47.2%) and vaccines (30%). Fabricated/manipulated (54.9%), followed by misleading content (36.9%), were the most common misinformation types. The most frequent framing strategy involved distortion of science and medicine (29.6%), followed by entertainment/satire (23.6%), political content (18.9%), and conspiracies (13.3%). Notably, 36.3% of claims were translated from English, and only 50% of the analyzed content was moderated by the original platforms.

Conclusions:

Fact-checked Arabic COVID-19 misinformation exhibited distinct patterns, including heavy reliance on translated content, manipulated content, and scientific distortion as a credibility strategy, and significant gaps in platform moderation. These findings highlight the need for enhanced Arabic-language content moderation, cross-linguistic fact-checking collaboration, culturally appropriate media and health literacy interventions, and rebuilding institutional trust to address misinformation in the Arab-world effectively. Clinical Trial: N/A