China played leading role in spreading Covid-19 conspiracies, investigation finds
- Beijing was one of the biggest spreaders of misinformation, including claims about bioweapons, an analysis of social media posts finds
- Investigation also finds that media and officials in Russia, Iran and US – including Donald Trump – also ramped up politically charged claims
It took just three months for the rumour that Covid-19 was engineered as a bioweapon to spread from the fringes of the Chinese internet and take root in millions of people’s minds.
By March 2020, belief that the virus had been human-made and possibly weaponised was widespread, multiple surveys indicated. The Pew Research Center found, for example, that one in three Americans believed the new coronavirus had been created in a lab; one in four thought it had been engineered intentionally.
Powerful forces, from Beijing and Washington to Moscow and Tehran, have battled to control the narrative about where the virus came from.
Leading officials and allied media in all four countries functioned as super-spreaders of disinformation, using their stature to sow doubt and amplify politically expedient conspiracies already in circulation, a nine-month investigation of state-sponsored disinformation conducted in collaboration with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab found.
The analysis was based on a review of millions of social media postings and articles on Twitter, Facebook, VK, Weibo, WeChat, YouTube, Telegram, and other platforms.