{"doi":"10.2196/26933","title":"Bots and Misinformation Spread on Social Media: Implications for COVID-19","abstract":"As of March 2021, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been responsible for over 115 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide, resulting in over 2.5 million deaths. As the virus spread exponentially, so did its media coverage, resulting in a proliferation of conflicting information on social media platforms-a so-called \"infodemic.\" In this viewpoint, we survey past literature investigating the role of automated accounts, or \"bots,\" in spreading such misinformation, drawing connections to the COVID-19 pandemic. We also review strategies used by bots to spread (mis)information and examine the potential origins of bots. We conclude by conducting and presenting a secondary analysis of data sets of known bots in which we find that up to 66% of bots are discussing COVID-19. The proliferation of COVID-19 (mis)information by bots, coupled with human susceptibility to believing and sharing misinformation, may well impact the course of the pandemic.","journal":"Journal of Medical Internet Research","year":2021,"id":146423,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":223,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9527,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":509750,"name":"Salvatore Giorgi","orcid":"0000-0001-7381-6295","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":621982,"name":"Amanda Devoto","orcid":"0000-0003-3605-5997","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":621983,"name":"Muhammad Mahbubur Rahman","orcid":"0000-0002-3963-5949","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":15862,"name":"Lyle Ungar","orcid":"0000-0003-2047-1443","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":509754,"name":"H. Andrew Schwartz","orcid":"0000-0002-6383-3339","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":311271,"name":"David H. Epstein","orcid":"0000-0001-8147-0386","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":239673,"name":"Lorenzo Leggio","orcid":"0000-0001-7284-8754","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":311274,"name":"Brenda Curtis","orcid":"0000-0002-2511-3322","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":621981,"name":"McKenzie Himelein-Wachowiak","orcid":"0000-0003-3291-343X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":82,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:42:18.947086Z","pmid":"33882014","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}