Table 1 Description of the nine categories of news in our classification
From: Assessing the risks of ‘infodemics’ in response to COVID-19 epidemics
Category | Harm Score | Description | Count | Type | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Science | 1 | Domains providing content validated via scientific scrutiny. | 150 | Reliable | 1,434 |
Mainstream media | 2 | Domains providing content that is generally subjected to professional fact checking and abides by the rules of media accountability. | 1,284 | ||
Satire | 3 | Domains providing content that is intentionally and explicitly aiming at providing a distorted representation of events as a form of humour and/or social critique. | 177 | Unreliable | 2,264 |
Clickbait | 4 | Domains providing content that generally distorts or intentionally misrepresents information to capture attention. | 47 | ||
Political | 7 | Domains providing content that presents a partisan representation and interpretation of facts to support a political position over rival ones. | 697 | ||
Fake or hoax | 8 | Domains providing manipulative and fabricated content with the purpose of misleading public opinion on socially relevant issues and provoking inflammatory responses. | 917 | ||
Conspiracy and junk science | 9 | Domains providing systematically manipulative and fabricated content with the purpose of legitimizing implausible conceptualizations of facts and knowledge through argumentative methods that coarsely mimic those of scientific reasoning but without any sound logical or factual basis, targeting individuals or social groups as covert instigators or perpetrators of harmful actions. | 426 | ||
Other | 5 | Domains pointing to general content that cannot be easily classified, such as videos on YouTube. | 160 | Unknown | 194 |
Shadow | 6 | Domains related to URL shortening that cannot be classified a priori but would require further URL expansion. | 34 |
