COVID-19 fake news prediction on social media data

Abstract

It is, to tell the truth, that the COVID-19 pandemic has put the whole world in a tough time, and sensitive information concerning COVID-19 has grown tremendously online. Most importantly, the gradual spread of fake news and misleading information during these hard times can have dire consequences, causing widespread panic and exacerbating the apparent threat of a pandemic that we cannot ignore. Because of the time-consuming nature of evidence gathering and careful truth-checking, people get confused between fallacious and trustworthy statement. So, we need a way to keep track of misinformation on social media. Most people think that all social media information is real information though, at the same time, it is a shame that some people misuse this social media platform for their own benefit by spreading misinformation. Many individuals take advantage by playing with the weaknesses of others. As a result, people around the world not only are facing COVID-19, they are also facing infodemics. To get rid of this kind of fake news, we have proposed a research model that can predict fake news related to the COVID-19 issue on social media data using classical classification methods such as multinomial naïve bayes classifier, logistic regression classifier, and support vector machine classifier. Moreover, we have applied a deep learning based algorithm named distil BERT to accurately predict fake COVID-19 news. These approaches have been used in this paper to compare which technique is much more convenient for accurately predicting fake news about COVID-19 on social media posts. In addition, we have used a data-set that included 6424 social media posts.

It is, to tell the truth, that the COVID-19 pandemic has put the whole world in a tough time, and sensitive information concerning COVID-19 has grown tremendously online. Most importantly, the gradual spread of fake news and misleading information during these hard times can have dire consequences, causing widespread panic and exacerbating the apparent threat of a pandemic that we cannot ignore. Because of the time-consuming nature of evidence gathering and careful truth-checking, people get confused between fallacious and trustworthy statement. So, we need a way to keep track of misinformation on social media. Most people think that all social media information is real information though, at the same time, it is a shame that some people misuse this social media platform for their own benefit by spreading misinformation. Many individuals take advantage by playing with the weaknesses of others. As a result, people around the world not only are facing COVID-19, they are also facing infodemics. To get rid of this kind of fake news, we have proposed a research model that can predict fake news related to the COVID-19 issue on social media data using classical classification methods such as multinomial naïve bayes classifier, logistic regression classifier, and support vector machine classifier. Moreover, we have applied a deep learning based algorithm named distil BERT to accurately predict fake COVID-19 news. These approaches have been used in this paper to compare which technique is much more convenient for accurately predicting fake news about COVID-19 on social media posts. In addition, we have used a data-set that included 6424 social media posts.