The COVID-19 Misinfodemic: Moving Beyond Fact-Checking

Online misinformation regarding COVID-19 has undermined public health efforts to control the novel coronavirus. To date, public health organizations’ efforts to counter COVID-19 misinformation have focused on identifying and correcting false information on social media platforms. Citing extant literature in health communication and psychology, we argue that these fact-checking efforts are a necessary, but insufficient, response to health misinformation. First, research suggests that fact-checking has several important limitations and is rarely successful in fully undoing the effects of misinformation exposure. Second, there are many factors driving misinformation sharing and acceptance in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic—such as emotions, distrust, cognitive biases, racism, and xenophobia—and these factors both make individuals more vulnerable to certain types of misinformation and also make them impervious to future correction attempts. We conclude by outlining several additional measures, beyond fact-checking, that may help further mitigate the effects of misinformation in the current pandemic.

Download Full-text

Little bugs and wicked viruses: Communicating the COVID-19 pandemic through picturebooks for children

Journal of Science & Popular Culture ◽

10.1386/jspc_00022_1 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 3-19 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Elizabeth F. Caldwell ◽

Sarah Falcus

Keyword(s):

Health Professionals ◽

Hand Washing ◽

The Novel ◽

Health Organizations ◽

Large Numbers ◽

The Social ◽

Public Health Organizations ◽

National Public Health ◽

Novel Coronavirus ◽

Staying At Home

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the production of large numbers of books to educate children about the novel coronavirus and the measures to control its spread. The books have been produced by a wide variety of different individuals and organizations, from health professionals and educators to national public health organizations and the United Nations. This study provides a detailed analysis of 73 picturebooks about coronavirus/COVID-19 available in English and produced between March and June 2020. The analysis reveals that the books combine early scientific knowledge about the novel coronavirus with pre-existing connotations of germs to produce a specific, comprehensible cause for the social disruption produced by the pandemic. This portrayal is frequently used to mobilize children to be heroes and fight the virus through a number of behavioural measures, principally frequent hand washing and staying at home. The books also reveal adult anxieties about the nature of childhood and the uncertainty of the nature and timing of a post-pandemic future.

Download Full-text

How to Fight an Infodemic: The Four Pillars of Infodemic Management (Preprint)

10.2196/preprints.21820 ◽

2020 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Gunther Eysenbach

Keyword(s):

Scientific Field ◽

World Health ◽

Internet Research ◽

Health Organizations ◽

Ehealth Literacy ◽

Information Monitoring ◽

Public Health Organizations ◽

Social Media Platforms ◽

Fact Checking ◽

Health Organization

UNSTRUCTURED In this issue of the <i>Journal of Medical Internet Research</i>, the World Health Organization (WHO) is presenting a framework for managing the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infodemic. Infodemiology is now acknowledged by public health organizations and the WHO as an important emerging scientific field and critical area of practice during a pandemic. From the perspective of being the first “infodemiolgist” who originally coined the term almost two decades ago, I am positing four pillars of infodemic management: (1) information monitoring (infoveillance); (2) building eHealth Literacy and science literacy capacity; (3) encouraging knowledge refinement and quality improvement processes such as fact checking and peer-review; and (4) accurate and timely knowledge translation, minimizing distorting factors such as political or commercial influences. In the current COVID-19 pandemic, the United Nations has advocated that facts and science should be promoted and that these constitute the antidote to the current infodemic. This is in stark contrast to the realities of infodemic mismanagement and misguided upstream filtering, where social media platforms such as Twitter have advertising policies that sideline science organizations and science publishers, treating peer-reviewed science as “inappropriate content.”

Download Full-text

Content analysis and characterization of medical tweets during the early Covid-19 pandemic

10.1101/2020.12.22.20248712 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Ross Prager ◽

Michael Pratte ◽

Rudy R. Unni ◽

Sudarshan Bala ◽

Nicholas Ng Fat Hing ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Emotional Impact ◽

Original Research ◽

The Novel ◽

False Information ◽

Content Category ◽

Potential Benefits ◽

Novel Coronavirus ◽

New Research ◽

Policy Discussion

ABSTRACTObjectiveThe novel coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) has infected millions worldwide and impacted the lives of many folds more. Many clinicians share new Covid-19 related resources, research, and ideas within the online Free Open Access to Medical Education (FOAM) community of practice. This study provides a detailed content and contributor analysis of Covid-19 related tweets among the FOAM community.Design, Setting, ParticipantsTwitter was searched from November 1st, 2019 to March 21st, 2020 for English tweets discussing Covid-19 in the FOAM community. Tweets were classified into one of 13 pre-specified content categories: original research, editorials, FOAM resource, public health, podcast or video, learned experience, refuting false information, policy discussion, emotional impact, blatantly false information, other Covid-19, and non-Covid-19. Further analysis of linked original research and FOAM resources was performed. 1000 randomly selected contributor profiles and those deemed to have contributed false information were analyzed.ResultsThe search yielded 8541 original tweets from 4104 contributors. The number of tweets in each content category were: 1557 other Covid-19 (18·2%), 1190 emotional impact (13·9%), 1122 FOAM resources (13·1%), 1111 policy discussion (13·0%), 928 advice (10·9%), 873 learned experience (10·2%), 424 non-Covid-19 (5·0%), 410 podcast or video (4·8%), 304 editorials (3·6%), 275 original research (3·2%), 245 public health (2·9%), 83 refuting false information (1·0%), and 19 blatantly false (0·2%).ConclusionsEarly in the Covid-19 pandemic, the FOAM community used Twitter to share Covid-19 learned experiences, online resources, crowd-sourced advice, research, and to discuss the emotional impact of Covid-19. Twitter also provided a forum for post-publication peer review of new research. Sharing blatantly false information within this community was infrequent. This study highlights several potential benefits from engaging with the FOAM community on Twitter.

Download Full-text

How to Fight an Infodemic: The Four Pillars of Infodemic Management

Journal of Medical Internet Research ◽

10.2196/21820 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 22 (6) ◽

pp. e21820 ◽

Cited By ~ 19

Author(s):

Gunther Eysenbach

Keyword(s):

Scientific Field ◽

World Health ◽

Internet Research ◽

Health Organizations ◽

Ehealth Literacy ◽

Information Monitoring ◽

Public Health Organizations ◽

Social Media Platforms ◽

Fact Checking ◽

Health Organization

In this issue of the Journal of Medical Internet Research, the World Health Organization (WHO) is presenting a framework for managing the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infodemic. Infodemiology is now acknowledged by public health organizations and the WHO as an important emerging scientific field and critical area of practice during a pandemic. From the perspective of being the first “infodemiologist” who originally coined the term almost two decades ago, I am positing four pillars of infodemic management: (1) information monitoring (infoveillance); (2) building eHealth Literacy and science literacy capacity; (3) encouraging knowledge refinement and quality improvement processes such as fact checking and peer-review; and (4) accurate and timely knowledge translation, minimizing distorting factors such as political or commercial influences. In the current COVID-19 pandemic, the United Nations has advocated that facts and science should be promoted and that these constitute the antidote to the current infodemic. This is in stark contrast to the realities of infodemic mismanagement and misguided upstream filtering, where social media platforms such as Twitter have advertising policies that sideline science organizations and science publishers, treating peer-reviewed science as “inappropriate content.”

Download Full-text

When governments spread lies, the fight is against two viruses: A study on the novel coronavirus pandemic in Brazil

10.1101/2020.10.20.20215962 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Priscila Biancovilli ◽

Claudia Jurberg

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Agenda Setting ◽

Real Life ◽

The Novel ◽

False Information ◽

Social Media Networks ◽

The Media ◽

Fact Checking ◽

Media Frame ◽

Novel Coronavirus

AbstractBackgroundOne of the challenges posed by the novel coronavirus pandemic is the infodemic risk, that is, a huge amount of information being published on the topic, along with misinformation and rumours. Around 100 million people in Brazil (50% of the inhabitants) are users of social media networks, and a substantial amount of false information about the disease circulates in these media.ObjectivesIn this study, we examine the agenda-setting, media frame and content of misinformation published on the topic.MethodsWe analysed all pieces of misinformation published by the Brazilian fact-checking service “Agência Lupa”, during six months of 2020. We used content analysis to classify the texts into categories, and three types of rumours were identified: Misleading content; fabricated content; false context.ResultsWe analysed 232 pieces of misinformation. Most were published on Facebook (76%), followed by Whatsapp, with 10% of total cases. Half of the stories (47%) are classified as “real-life”, that is, the focus is on everyday situations, or circumstances involving people. Regarding the type of misinformation, there is a preponderance of fabricated content, with 53% of total, followed by false context (34%) and misleading content (13%). Wrong information was mostly published in text format (47%). We discuss the influence that misinformation can have on the behaviour of the Brazilian population during the pandemic and how the media’s agenda-setting is influenced by false information published on social media.ConclusionsThis study shows that misinformation about COVID-19 in Brazil seem to help establish an agenda-setting in the country, and the media frame is aligned with President Bolsonaro’s political position.

Download Full-text

The Novel Coronavirus: A Bird's Eye View

The International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine ◽

10.15171/ijoem.2020.1921 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 65-71 ◽

Cited By ~ 90

Author(s):

Parham Habibzadeh ◽

Emily K. Stoneman

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Clinical Presentation ◽

Public Health Emergency ◽

Diagnosis And Treatment ◽

The Novel ◽

Health Organizations ◽

Death Toll ◽

Novel Coronavirus ◽

Available Information

The novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak, which initially began in China, has spread to many countries around the globe, with the number of confirmed cases increasing every day. With a death toll exceeding that of the SARS-CoV outbreak back in 2002 and 2003 in China, 2019-nCoV has led to a public health emergency of international concern, putting all health organizations on high alert. Herein, we present on an overview of the currently available information on the pathogenesis, epidemiology, clinical presentation, diagnosis, and treatment of this virus.

Download Full-text

Variation of Clinical Features of Covid19 Patients

Bangladesh Journal of Infectious Diseases ◽

10.3329/bjid.v7i0.46804 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. S54-S57

Author(s):

Nusrat Mannan ◽

Arifa Akram

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Infectious Diseases ◽

Clinical Features ◽

Clinical Presentation ◽

Public Health Emergency ◽

The Novel ◽

Health Organizations ◽

The World ◽

Novel Coronavirus ◽

Available Information

In December 2019, the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak, began in China, which has now spread many countries around the globe in a form of pandemic, with the number of confirmed cases increasing every day. With a death toll exceeding that of the SARS-CoV outbreak, 2019-nCoV has led to a public health emergency of international concern, putting all health organizations around the world on a high alert. Here, we presented an overview of the currently available information on the clinical presentation and complication of this virus. Bangladesh Journal of Infectious Diseases, April 2020;7(suppl_1):S54-S57

Download Full-text

Defending Lawsuits

10.1093/oso/9780190681050.003.0020 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Scott Burris ◽

Micah L. Berman ◽

Matthew Penn, and ◽

Tara Ramanathan Holiday

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Federal Government ◽

Technical Assistance ◽

Health Law ◽

Tobacco Company ◽

Amicus Curiae ◽

Health Organizations ◽

Public Health Organizations ◽

Health Laws

Chapter 20 explores the strategic reasons why entities may challenge public health laws, and uses the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company v. FDA case to walk through the steps of a legal challenge to a public health law. The chapter also identifies the attorneys involved in defending public health laws on behalf of local, state, and federal government entities and explains how legal technical assistance from public health organizations can support their efforts. Finally, the chapter defines the role of amicus curiae briefs and how they may effectively contribute to the defense of public health laws and regulations.

Download Full-text

A Failure of Political Communication Not a Failure of Bureaucracy: The Danger of Presidential Misinformation During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The American Review of Public Administration ◽

10.1177/0275074020941734 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 50 (6-7) ◽

pp. 614-620 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

William Hatcher

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Political Communication ◽

Political Polarization ◽

Medical Procedures ◽

The Novel ◽

Health Issues ◽

Social Distancing ◽

Health Related ◽

Novel Coronavirus ◽

Incorrect Information

President Trump’s communications during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic violate principles of public health, such as practicing transparency and deferring to medical experts. Moreover, the president’s communications are dangerous and misleading, and his lack of leadership during the crisis limits the nation’s response to the problem, increases political polarization around public health issues of social distancing, and spreads incorrect information about health-related policies and medical procedures. To correct the dangerous path that the nation is on, the administration needs to adopt a more expert-centered approach to the crisis, and President Trump needs to practice compassion, empathy, and transparency in his communications.

Download Full-text