Hybrid War and Fake News During COVID-19 Crisis in Iran

Although the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the world in a way not seen since the Spanish flu in the early 20th century, the situation in Iran was even more complex due to intricate political, social, and economic issues, as well as multiple disinformation campaigns targeting health crisis communication during the pandemic. This study employs a mixed-methods descriptive-survey approach to examine the spread of fake news about COVID-19 in Iran. In the first phase, an extensive data mining process was conducted on 21 million tweets published between December 2019 and October 2021. During this stage, 89 days with COVID-related trending topics on Twitter were identified. Subsequently, six highly popular Telegram channels that republished Twitter content were analyzed to investigate the spread of fake news. The findings indicate that more than 50% of Persian-language tweets about COVID-19 were posted between February and June 2020, coinciding with the initial outbreak in Iran. The analysis revealed that disinformation campaigns primarily aimed to erode public trust in the government and health institutions while manipulating public perception regarding vaccination. Additionally, four major narratives about vaccines were identified in Persian Twitter discussions: support for purchasing foreign vaccines, support for domestic vaccine production, opposition to foreign vaccines, and advocacy for free vaccine distribution.