A Dataset of Fact-Checked Images Shared on WhatsApp during the Brazilian and Indian Elections

(Dataset paper). In Proceedings of the Int'l AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM’20). Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. June 2020.

Abstract: Recently, messaging applications, such as WhatsApp, have been reportedly abused by misinformation campaigns, especially in Brazil and India. A notable form of abuse in WhatsApp relies on several manipulated images and memes containing all kinds of fake stories. In this work, we performed an extensive data collection from a large set of WhatsApp publicly accessible groups and  fact-checking agency websites. This paper opens a novel dataset to the research community containing fact-checked fake images shared through WhatsApp for two distinct scenarios known for the  spread of fake news on the platform: the 2018 Brazilian elections and the 2019 Indian elections.