Truth decayCOVID-19–Related Infodemic Has Consequences for Public Health
Infodemic is “an overabundance of information—some accurate and some not—that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.” A new study of COVID-19-related infodemic on social media analyzed thousands of COVID-19-related postings, finding that 82 percent of them were false.
A new study published in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene analyzes the infodemic of COVID-19 information.
Pandora Reports notes that an infodemic is “an overabundance of information—some accurate and some not—that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.” An infodemic comprises rumors, stigmas, and conspiracy theories. Monitoring social media data is the best method for tracking these inaccuracies in real time in order to help “dispel misinformation and reduce stigma.”
The study’s authors extracted COVID-19–related misinformation shared on online platforms – fact-checking agency websites, Facebook, Twitter, and online newspapers – and assessed their impact on public health. The researchers identified 2,311 reports of rumors, stigma, and conspiracy theories in 25 languages from 87 countries. Claims covered illness, transmission, and mortality (24 percent), control measures (21 percent), treatments (19 percent), as well as causes of disease including the origin (15 percent), violence (1 percent), and miscellaneous (20 percent).
Eighty-two percent of the analyzed claims were false.
“These findings are quite concerning because of the potentially serious health implications of misinformation fueled by rumors, stigma, and conspiracy theories,” Pandora Reports stresses.
