Table 4: Summary of anonymous False News on Social Media Identified by the Costa Rican Government (July 2019 - 7 June 2020) Topic No. of Items Type Welfare State/Social Service Provision 6 negative Corona Virus 3 negative Fiscal Reform and Govt. Liquidity 2 negative Bitcoin 2 positive endorsement First Lady 1 positive endorsement Ministry of Education/Education Policy 1 negative Public Sector Salaries 1 negative Transport regulation 1 negative President 1 negative Total 18 Source: Author’s summary based on archive available at https://aclaraciones.presidencia.go.cr/ . Private Initiatives “Double Check” started in October 2018 to contrast news and detect false, misleading statements or half-truths in Costa Rica’s political discourse as well as the media. It is financed by the UCR’s Office of Dissemination and Information and has been supported by the University Radio and Television (Channel 15), as well as the university newspaper Semanario Universidad. Since February 2020, “Costa Rica Noticias”, the main public television news program features weekly contributions from “Double Check”. The initiative received the 2019 National Journalism Prize Pío Víquez awarded by Costa Rica’s Ministry of Culture. Of the 128 items which circulated on social media and were identified as outright false by the editors (rather than misleading) between 1st October 2018 and 5th July 2020, 22 were lies related to the coronavirus, followed by 14 pieces of disinformation on government spending and public sector salaries. Another 14 items were anti-establishment propaganda. 11 items were fake news related to immigration and xenophobic content. Attacks on the government’s health policies also featured 11 times. False information relating to taxes and the PAC’s fiscal reform were identified 10 times. Another eight pieces related to the 2018 strikes and attacked on the Minister of Education and false news about his policies. Abortion featured seven times, as did false news related to the economy. 5 articles published by Doble Check within this timeframe referred to disinformation on the country’s security situation or arms. Pro-government propaganda featured only twice, so did elections. Finally, seven fake news items covered various other topics. The source of at least 17 of these items were current legislators. These results are summarized in Table 5. Table 5: Summary of Information shared on Social Media Identified as outright false by “Double Check” between 1 October 2018 and 5 July 2020 Topic No. of Items Type Corona Virus 22 positive and negative Government Spending and 14 negative Public Sector Salaries Anti-Establishment/Anti14 negative Government 96