Chris Liebold
Dr. Jingyuan Yu and Prof. Dr. Emese Domahidi, have recently published a new article titled "Crisis, country, and party lines: politicians' misinformation behavior and public engagement" in the Journal of Computational Social Science.
Using data from Twitter/X, the study systematically examines the spread of misinformation by politicians and related public exchanges in four countries (Germany, Italy, the UK, and the US) in 2020 and 2021. The results show that politicians from countries with high levels of political polarization and populist communication, particularly Italy and the US, had the highest rates of misinformation dissemination. This behavior was particularly pronounced among MPs on the right and conservative spectrum. Public interaction with misinformation differed significantly between national contexts. In the United States, misinformation received more than 2.5 times as many interactions as reliable information. In Italy, misinformation and reliable content received comparable levels of engagement overall; however, crisis-related misinformation, particularly in the context of COVID-19, was more widespread and generated significantly higher engagement than general misinformation. Through the cross-national and multi-level analysis approach, the study extends existing research by showing how political actors contribute to the spread and amplification of misinformation during times of crisis.
This study was conducted in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Duccio Gamannossi degl'Innocenti (University of Padua, Italy) and Prof. Dr. Fabiana Zollo (Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy) as part of the DECIPHER project (ID: 458225198) funded by the German Research Foundation.
Further information on the article: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42001-025-00447-y Further information on the DECIPHER project: https://www.tu-ilmenau.de/decipher