In Italian the word "bufala" means, not mamma buffalo, as in "mozzarella di bufala," but a "whopper" or, in today's jargon, fake news. No less than anywhere else, bufala whoppers are roaming through the news ranges of Italy.
According to Hoaxy, the brown dots represent misinformation in the Twittersphere network
Italian professor Filippo Menczer is working with Indiana University Bloomington to launch a new program called "Hoaxy" which serves as a platform for tracking online misinformation.