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.
Download