arXiv:2007.09682v1 [cs.SI] 19 Jul 2020 The COVID-19 Social Media Infodemic Reflects Uncertainty and State-Sponsored Propaganda David A. Broniatowski 1,* , Daniel Kerchner 1 , Fouzia Farooq 2 , Xiaolei Huang 3 , Amelia M. Jamison 4 , Mark Dredze 3 , Sandra Crouse Quinn 4 1 The George Washington University, Washington, DC 2 University of Pittsburgh 3 Johns Hopkins University 4 University of Maryland * broniatowski@gwu.edu Abstract Significant attention has been devoted to determining the credibility of online misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic on social media. Here, we compare the credibility of tweets about COVID-19 to datasets pertaining to other health issues. We find that the quantity of information about COVID-19 is indeed overwhelming, but that the majority of links shared cannot be rated for its credibility. Reasons for this failure to rate include widespread use of social media and news aggregators. The majority of links that could be rated came from credible sources; however, we found a large increase in the proportion of state-sponsored propaganda among non-credible and less credible URLs, suggesting that COVID-19 may be used as a vector to spread misinformation and disinformation for political purposes. Overall, results indicate that COVID-19 is unfolding in a highly uncertain information environment that not may amenable to fact-checking as scientific understanding of the disease, and appropriate public health measures, evolve. As a consequence, public service announcements must adequately communicate the uncertainly underlying these recommendations, while still encouraging healthy behaviors. 1 Introduction COVID-19, an illness caused by the SARS-COV-2 virus, is a potentially fatal disease that was declared a pandemic on March 11th, 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO) [4]. As the pandemic was emerging, the WHO declared a COVID-19 “infodemic” – “an overabundance of information, some accurate and some not that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.” [2] The quantity of untrustworthy content shared online can hamper an effective public health response and create confusion and distrust among people (3), ultimately leading to significant loss of life. Significant attention has focused on the malicious aspects of this infodemic, for example, with the United Nations characterizing it as an “‘infodemic’ of misinformation and cybercrime” [12]. Here, we seek to characterize the “infodemic” on Twitter – one of the world’s most popular social media platforms. An exploratory study assessing information sharing on Twitter early in the COVID-19 pandemic traced how tweet and retweet volume 1/13