International Journal of Academic Multidisciplinary Research (IJAMR)   Year: 2023 | Volume: 7 | Issue: 1 | Page No.: 253-259 The Role of Social Media in Spreading Rumors in Bangladesh during COVID-19 Pandemic Download PDF Imran Hossain, A K M Mahmudul Haque Abstract: Rumors have harmful effects on society. With the advent of the internet, social media have emerged as the most respected platform for infotainment, democracy, and free speech. By using a qualitative research design, the researchers in this study have attempted to determine whether social media is accurately or inaccurately educating the public about the COVID-19 epidemic. The results of this investigation will help determine whether the public is receiving accurate or false information about the COVID-19 epidemic from social media. The results suggest that over a 150-day period, from March 1 to July 30, 2020, social media generated about 100 fake information about COVID-19. The findings also indicate that 64.6% of respondents obtain information on COVID-19 from social media. Facebook has a big part to play in this. A whopping 53.0% of social media users admitted finding false information about COVID-19 on Facebook. Facebook is the fastest means to propagate fake news in a short amount of time, spreading fake news at a rate of 63.0%. Text and video together make up the majority of false news (50.9%). So, social media is a significant source of knowledge about COVID-19. Nearly 47.6% of those surveyed never attempted to independently verify any rumors or facts about COVID-19. Less research, however, has been done on the dissemination of incorrect and unsupported information during medical emergencies. In order to examine how false information was disseminated, the current study attempts to shed new light on the types of fake news that were shared on social media during the COVID-19 outbreak.