Verification in the Covid-19 infodemic. Newtral's case study

Introduction: This work describes Newtral's verification procedures in the infodemic that has occurred during the Covid-19 crisis and the characteristics of the verified content. Methodology: 205 verified pieces of content published between January 25 and May 25, 2020, are analyzed; verification processes are followed up and an unstructured personal interview with Newtral's head of contents is conducted. Results: The number of verified content increased considerably as of March 10, four days before the state of alarm was decreed. Regarding verification methods, sources were consulted in 90.5% of cases, while technological tools were only used in 9.5%. The most widespread were texts on social media, detecting 66% of cases in more than one social network. It was impossible to detect the origin in 91.7% of the verified pieces of contents. Discussion and conclusions: Consulting various sources is the most widely used verification method, far more than tools such as search engines or geolocation apps. Consultations of official and impersonated sources prevailed. The most common were fabricated and imposter content disseminated through social media and WhatsApp.