July 30, 2024 It’s a trick as old as time, one common among Shakepeare’s Iagos, modern day demagogues, and cyber scammers: deception is most effective when it plays upon emotion. Sympathy scams are a perfect example. These typically take the form of hoax social media posts purporting to be about something that tends to play […]
Fact-check Malta: Beware of sympathy scams Read More »
July 30, 2024 New data published on Tuesday 23 July puts paid to ongoing speculation about how much workers in Malta earn on average. The debate over salaries is a regular feature of public discourse in Malta, with social media users frequently resorting to anecdotal or downright fabricated figures to drive their point home. But
Fact-check Malta: What is Malta’s average wage? Read More »
July 10, 2024 Social media users have recently shared a photo on social media that they claim shows ‘Roman tidal baths’ in Malta that disprove climate change. One X user sharing the photo wrote ‘Roman tidal baths on Malta – still at sea level after thousands of years. But – climate change is about to
Fact check Malta: Do these ‘Roman-era’ baths disprove climate change? Read More »
July 10, 2024 Social media sees an endless stream of trends. A potential contender for the summer’s hottest: sunscreen is actually bad for you. At least, so say a number of TikTok users. News sites in the United States have been reporting that misinformation about sunscreen is spreading profusely on the bite-size video platform and
Fact check Malta: TikTok is soaking up sunscreen misinformation Read More »
July 8, 2024 On Saturday 6 July, an image showing what appeared to be a digger demolishing rainbow-coloured steps in a seemingly suburban street while a man stood watching a few metres away, was widely shared on Facebook. Amongst those who shared it was a self-proclaimed ‘personal blog’ page called ‘This is Malta’, which shared
Fact check Malta: Watch your step – image of rainbow steps being shared out of context Read More »
July 8, 2024 Shocking new revelations into a Steward-funded campaign orchestrated to smear former Health Minister Chris Fearne led inaccurate claims over whether this absolved Fearne of his ongoing legal troubles linked to a concession awarding three of Malta’s public hospitals to a private consortium. The deal was later taken over by US healthcare giant
Fact-check Malta: Do smear campaign reports clear Chris Fearne? Read More »
July 1, 2024 What do Malta’s former prime minister, a podcaster and a journalist have in common? They and others are the subject of a new scam circulating locally on social media. Cyber scams are becoming more sophisticated, though this latest one is not particularly ingenious. Consisting of posts identical in form and content, most
June 27, 2024 Several of Malta’s largest localities emerged from the local council elections held on 8 June with hung councils, after neither of Malta’s two main political parties obtained a majority of seats. In Birkirkara, one of Malta’s most populated towns, the Labour Party (PL) and Nationalist Party (PN) each won six seats, meaning
Fact-check Malta: Who gets to be mayor in Malta’s hung councils? Read More »
June 27, 2024 Rumours that a butcher on the island of Gozo was killing sick dogs and cats and selling them to customers as sausages spread like wildfire on Friday 21 June, causing panic and disgust in equal measure. They claimed that several people had fallen sick and were admitted to hospital over the weekend
June 20, 2024 Prior to the MEP elections held on June 8, 2024, the Maltese state broadcaster, TVM, aired an advert containing footage manipulated to support the agenda of a far-right MEP candidate. The advert was produced by far-right party Imperium Europa. It features the party’s founder and leader, Norman Lowell, urging people to “open
Take our survey and help us understand how disinformation spreads.