A content analysis of health and science-related hoaxes during COVID-19 in Spain

This dataset contains the coding of a sample of hoaxes published by these three fact-checking organizations over a three-month period (March 11 to June 10, 2020), which started when the WHO declared the pandemic. The sample includes hoaxes (N=533) debunked by three Spanish fack-checking organizations: Maldita.es (N = 327), Newtral (N = 143), and EFE Verifica (N = 63). The coding includes:

Subject of the hoax: science/health, politics/government, other.

Next, all science/health hoaxes (N = 187) were coded, and the following variables were analyzed:

Platform used to spread the hoax: networks (in general), Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, and others.

Formats used: text, audio, image, video, other.

Geographical scope: local, national, international, unspecified/not applicable.

Type of hoax: joke, exaggeration, decontextualization, deception.

Topic of hoaxes related to science/health: scientific research, scientific policy and health management, advice issued to the public, and others.

Topic of hoaxes related to scientific research: origin of the virus, transmissibility, fatality rate, treatments, vaccines, etc.

Source type: anonymous, spoofed, fictitious, real.

Non-anonymous sources: members of the public, business, government, professional, healthcare/science.

Type of healthcare/science sources: researchers, international scientific organizations, national scientific organizations, health professionals, and others.