Study Reveals TikTok’s Spread of COVID-19 Misinformation

Morgan Lundy

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Information Sciences

A new study conducted by PhD student Morgan Lundy, which was recently published in the International Journal of Communication, reveals how TikTok‘s unique features have been used to spread COVID-19 misinformation. Unlike Twitter, which uses a text format, the micro-video format of TikTok makes it more difficult to detect deceptive information.

“That’s why I lean towards qualitative methods for deeply understanding how misinformation is appearing on TikTok,” Lundy said. “The information is passed through such rich media objects, you have sound, visuals, text, body language, captions, and meme elements that require context, and all these factors interact at once to create the ‘meaning’ or (mis)information that is being shared.”

Lundy used a dual approach of algorithm training and hashtag sampling to gain data for her research. She also used methods of searching for “community language” rather than expected terms, to get a much more representative and useful picture of how misinformation looks on the platform. According to Lundy, the incredible reactiveness of TikTok’s algorithms’ collaborative filtering poses a particular challenge to containing the infodemic.

“The more misinformation you interact with, the more that you see—you can quickly find yourself immersed in massive numbers of TikTok videos relating to COVID-19 vaccine misinformation just after liking a few videos,” she said.

Lundy learned that TikTok users who oppose the COVID-19 vaccine use intentionally coded language,

From “Study Reveals TikTok’s Spread of COVID-19 Misinformation”
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Information Sciences (06/08/23)
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