Has the avalanche of misinformation shared on Twitter harmed people’s health during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States? UWM geographers tested the question by mapping the locations of tweets. They found a direct correlation between locations where Twitter misinformation originated and subsequent spikes in COVID-19 infections and deaths in those areas weeks later.
On this episode of Curious Campus, we talk about research into misinformation and the pandemic with Rina Ghose, the UW-Milwaukee professor of geography who led the study of social media activity in 2020, and graduate students Amir Forati and Rachel Hansen.
