Publication: Impact Analysis and Correlation Study on the Spread of Fake News During Pandemic COVID-19 in Malaysia
Date
2021
Authors
Nordin A.Q.
Jamil N.
Zain Z.M.
Ahmad Zawawi M.N.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Abstract
The issue of fake news spread on social media especially during the pandemic of COVID-19 has become a major threat to various sectors and agencies in Malaysia. It is observed that the new norm that requires Malaysian to work and stay at home during Movement Control Order (MCO) has contributed to the rapid spread of the fake news. In this research, we study the impact of the fake news during the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia and how the number of COVID-19 positive cases in the country would affect the number of fake news being spread locally. We also conducted a correlation analysis between the number of fake news and the number of COVID-19 cases. Result shows a significant strong positive correlation between the two studied variables. Besides, we built a fake news prediction model using linear regression algorithm to predict the number of fake news based the number of COVID-19 cases. However, the model did not show a good performance. This paper is targeted to assist the government, especially Majlis Keselamatan Negara, during the formulation of action plan and decision making in the effort to hinder the spread of fake news, by implying the constructed formula to predict the number of fake news in a day based on the number of COVID-19 positive cases. � 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
Description
Decision making; Fake detection; Forecasting; Control orders; Correlation analysis; Correlation studies; COVID-19; Fake news; Impact analysis; Malaysia; Movement control; Movement control order; Social media; Correlation methods