Celebrities spreading nonsense about coronavirus

Celebrities including actor Woody Harelson are responsible for spreading a huge chunk of misinformation on the coronavirus according to a study by Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the study of journalism. Harrelson and singer MIA used social media to promote the bogus claim that 5G phone towers in China helped spread the virus. (The Guardian, April 8, 2020, by Jim Waterson)

Those in the public limelight, including politicians and celebrities, produced 20 percent of the misinformation, but that misinformation spread over a sizable majority of the social media engagements in the study sample. Twitter lagged behind YouTube and Facebook in removing misinformation. (NiemanLab, April 8, 2020, posted by Joshua Benton

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