The term “misinformation” may seem like it has been a mainstay in mainstream media news coverage for years because of the frequency with which it is used.
But statistics from GDELT’s Online News Summary tool, a service that summarizes global news media coverage of a particular topic and contains more than a quarter of a billion records, shows that most of the growth in the use of this term by the mainstream media occurred around the same time that the coronavirus outbreak was becoming a major story.
According to GDELT’s data, use of the term misinformation in news articles fluctuated between a low of 0.06% and a peak of 0.16% for more than three years between January 1, 2017 and February 2, 2020.
Then from February 3, 2020, use of the term misinformation in mainstream media news coverage almost doubled to a peak of 0.3% on April 11 and it has remained above 0.22% ever since.
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