The COVID-19 social media infodemic
We address the diffusion of information about the COVID-19 with a massive data analysis on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit and Gab. We analyze engagement and interest in the COVID-19 topic and provide a differential assessment on the evolution of the discourse on a global scale for each platform and their users. We fit information spreading with epidemic models characterizing the basic reproduction number R for each social media platform. Moreover, we identify information spreading from questionable sources, finding different volumes of misinformation in each platform.