Abstract 

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a subsequent surge of misinformation has created a public health crisis. Social media platforms like WhatsApp have contributed to amplifying the spread of unsound health advice about COVID-19, drowning out of reliable information from scientific research advice. This has resulted in communities losing trust in our healthcare system, diminishing helpful advice based on rumours and conspiracy theories. This conference paper intends to outline and address the impact social media platforms have on our communities, through the easy spread of misinformation from many different personality profiles, and online social media platforms. 

COVID-19 has killed more than 6 million people worldwide, it is a dangerous virus that needs proper measures in place to help protect the vulnerable people in our communities. According to research by WHO or World Health Organisation, nearly 6,000 people have been hospitalised due to COVID-19 misinformation, and at least 800 people have died (WHO, 2021). Social media platforms have put in measures to prevent the spread of misinformation, notifications on social media help inform users of the dangers of spreading misinformation. The BBC world news rolled out a public awareness campaign called ‘Stop the Spread’, to better help inform their viewers. Regardless, these measures have had little impact on the spread of misinformation. Although social media platforms are taking action, it may be too late, misguided advice has the potential to be extremely dangerous to our communities, and more needs to be done to stop it.

Introduction

Defined by the World Health Organisation (WHO) Infodemic is the overload of information that may include false or misleading content in digital and physical environments. An Infodemic can cause confusion and fear and may result in risk-taking behaviours that can be harmful to one’s health, and has the potential for self-harm or even death. The spread of misinformation can be extremely concerning as it undermines the trust in our health institutions. The intense spreading of this misinformation stimulates the spread of COVID-19, an infordemic spreads through social media platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook, individuals can transmit conspiracy theories with little to no repercussions. COVID-19 began in late December 2019, since then COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 has killed more than 6 million people across the globe (WHO Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard, n.d., p. 1). Though COVID-19 is proving itself to be a deadly virus, the novel coronavirus has an extended family of equally severe viruses. In 2002 SARS-CoV or acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus, infected over 8422 people, as a result, 916 lives were lost. In 2012 a new variant named the respiratory syndrome coronavirus or MERS-CoV emerged in the Middle East, it infected 2499 people and was associated with 861 deaths (Yao et al., 2020, p. 1). Today COVID-19 is responsible for over 480 million confirmed cases across the world, as reported by the World Health Organisation (WHO Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard, n.d.). COVID-19 has killed more than 6 million people worldwide, and has fueled social media communities with misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theorists, resulting in additional hospital patients and the loss of countless lives. 

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic fake news, misinformation, and conspiracy theories have soared, the undermined trust of our health institutions can be extremely damaging. An example of this is a video recorded by Dr. Lucy Morgan, a respiratory specialist, and released by New South Wales Health, showing heartbreaking stories about patients’ experience with COVID-19 at Sydney’s Concord Repatriation General Hospital. These videos were met with social media posts outlining conspiracy theories that received thousands of likes and views. These theories outlined that the people sharing their stories were ‘paid actors’. With the Chief Executive Dr Teresa Anderson making a statement to the ABC’s media watch “It has been highly distressing for Dr Morgan and the patients to see their powerful message undermined by these baseless and dangerous accusations, and to have their credibility questioned.” (Anderson, 2021). This conference paper intended to outline and address the underlying danger to our community through social media platforms amplifying the spread of COVID-19 misinformation, as a result, an infodemic has spread across our communities, having the potential to cause serious injury, illness, or even death. More needs to be done to control the spread of misinformation, fact-checks and public awareness campaigns are not enough.

COVID-19 Infodemic 

Infodemic can be as dangerous as any virus, it spreads through communities from online forums, social media platforms, close friends and relatives. An infodemic is the spread of misinformation or conspiracy theories often spreading on social media platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook, these theories begin when a traumatic event occurs. The history of popular conspiracy theories runs as far back as 4,500 years ago, when supposedly aliens constructed pyramids. Theories often come from world events that are challenging to comprehend like the 1969 moon landing being fabricated and the motives behind the death of Princess Diana in 1997. Conspiracies are not just accepted by a minority of the population as research by a poll at Howard/Ohio University, “More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East” (Stempel et al., 2007). Conspiracy theories like the terrorist attacks on 9/11 being perpetrated by the United States of America government, and the world trade center being empty when it collapsed, resulting in zero casualties, can provide individuals with a more acceptable answers, helping them find a more positive solution to events that are difficult to accept.

Different types of individual personalities can fuel the spread of misinformation, leading to a COVID-19 Infodemic. The five personalities outlined in this report are as follows; the comedian, the swindler, the politician, the conspiracy theorist, and a personal relative. The Comedian often shares humorous content online, however their peers online can take this information the wrong way. The swindler or scammer is motivated by money, they mislead communities into buying their fake remedies or cures. The swindler is regarded as disinformation as they intend to spread false information to profit. Politicians can sometimes use fake news through state-run media and social platforms to spread disinformation, using this technique to gain votes from like-minded voters. The conspiracy theorists often falsely believe in wide claims that have little to no facts and are extremely dangerous to our communities. A relative can often provide helpful information, news, and updates, however, as these are the people we know and trust, our relatives may not intend to cause harm or danger, nevertheless their advice may still be harmful and is based on little to no fact-checking or research. Misinformation on COVID-19 is so pervasive that even world power housing governments are willing to spread misinformation over COVID-19. It has been shown that both China and the United States of America are willing to trade misinformation about COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. As addressed in the research article The Politics of Blaming: the Narrative Battle between China and the US over COVID-19 “The conspiracy theories that have appeared in both China and the US and the promotion of such theories by high-level officials serve as good examples of such radicalization.” (Jaworsky & Qiaoan, 2020). Having leaders of global powers pushing misleading information has the potential to break down trust between the governments and its people. 

The key question in an age of an infodemic is how individuals process information and how the exchange of information leads to misinformation. Although mainstream media often release a correctional statement in the situation of a mistake in their news readings and articles. Mainstream media can also be held applicable in the spread of misinformation, often motivated by ad revenue, creating polarising headlines, and a desire to be first for breaking news. The mainstream media’s motivation is advertising revenue over reliability and has caused a split in trust in mainstream media. “The 2019 Digital News Report Australia Report found that trust in news has fallen globally (42%), including in Australia (44%). It also showed that mistrust in social media has risen from 45% in 2018 to 49% in 2019, and trust in social media had fallen from 24% to 18%” (Flew et al., 2020, p. 9). These unfortunate mistakes lead to the term fake news, meaning a mainstream news network working toward providing fabricated information from a biassed point of view. 

The impact on our communities 

Social media platforms are helping to spread misinformation faster and more dangerous than COVID-19. WhatsApp is a world wide messaging application with more than 1.5 billion users across countries like India, Brazil, Australia and Germany. These countries rely on WhatsApp to provide communication between friends and family, run businesses and provide vital news. WhatsApp allows for end-to-end encryption, sending messages, photos, videos, and audio calls. Features on the WhatsApp application allow for the viral spread of information to be broadcasted from instant messaging in groups that can spread like wildfire. For example, if a message is sent through a WhatsApp group of 20 individuals, and each group member sends that message to 20 more groups, if this were to happen five times more it could reach more than 3.2 million people. WhatsApp has become infamous for concerns about the spread of misinformation. In 2018 disseminated misinformation over WhatsApp helped fuel mob lynching in India, with false rumors about child kidnappings going viral (Goel, & Raj, S. (2018), as a result, 20 people were killed in two months.

When analysing misinformation in an infodemic, there are two types of misleading information, misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation is the spread of false information that regardless of whether there is intent to mislead can result in chaos, confusion, violence, and death. Disinformation is deliberately misleading or manipulating the narrative or facts to fuel self-purpose ideology. Personalities like the swindler, politician, and conspiracy theorist are those who spread disinformation with the intent of misleading communities. While individuals like the comedian and a personal relative spread misinformation, as they may not intend to deliberately contribute to an infodemic, they still result in the act. 

Stopping the Spread of Misinformation

The concept of misinformation has been around for a while, however, since the pandemic the minor act of spreading misinformation has become deadly. Although social media platforms and organisations are applying strategies and guidelines to stop the spread of misinformation, there are still challenges similar to finding a needle in a haystack. Social media platforms like Facebook have contributed to over 55 fact-checking partners, covering over 45 different languages across the globe (Meta, 2020). The World Health Organisation has implemented Infodemic management practices to provide good health practices, they are as follows; “Listening to community concerns and questions, Promoting understanding of risk and health expert advice, Building resilience to misinformation, Engaging and empowering communities to take positive action” (World Health Organisation, n.d.). As individuals we are also to be held accountable for the spread of misinformation, we can take ownership of this false information, by speaking up and taking notice of misinformation online. Giving voice to a rumour or ‘he say, she say’ will only allow these fabricated ideas to continue spreading. When online we must take notice and properly inform any individuals of the danger of spreading misinformation about COVID-19.

The attitudes and behaviours of individuals online can often be consequential to the impact of spreading misinformation. Fact-checking is helpful and studies have shown that it can change minds and even discourage people from sharing misinformation. Often social media messages forming users about the dangers of misinformation, are not always helpful, as noted in the community article named Misinformation and Polarisation in a High-Choice Media Environment,“First, the findings of research exploring whether fact-checkers can effectively discredit misinformation in partisan settings are still inconclusive (e.g., Fridkin et al., 2015; Thorson, 2016). Second, most of these experimental studies required individuals to read fact-checking messages that they may not normally choose to consume, ignoring potential confirmation biases in the self-selection or avoidance of such information.” (Hameleers & van der Meer, 2019). The impact of fact-checking is limited by the numbers of fact-checkers and the ability to produce a meaningful impact with messaging. Large social media companies and country governments need to provide more financial aid into creating impactful messaging and fact-checkers. Improving the message around the impact of misinformation around COVID-19 will provide our communities with the correct information about protecting families and loved ones from COVID-19. Giving power back to our communities and allowing for the best possible choices with well researched facts about COVID-19, will help to protect families from this devastating disease, and give ourselves the best possible position for any future global catastrophe.

Conclusion 

The World Health Organisation has labelled this COVID-19 infodemic as risk-taking behaviours that can be harmful to one’s health. It is clear that social media platforms have the potential to provide tools for spreading misinformation and disinformation quickly and easily. In this report, I have addressed the history of COVID-19, and how this pandemic created an infodemic, which became just as dangerous as any virus that spread across the world. This paper addressed the impact on our communities, how dangerous misinformation can be, and the lives it has the potential to take. In addition, the steps being taken to slow the spread of misinformation, how we are still behind on taking control of this infodemic, but with more funding from governing bodies and social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp, we may be able to make a greater impact in preventing the spread. Although this report touches on the potential resolution for taking action against misinformation, more can be done. Research into the personalities of individuals that spread misinformation online, can give us the ability to understand the interaction between these individuals. Furthermore, more action needs to be implemented with social media companies and their fact-checkers, the amount of fact-checking is insufficient for the number of misinformation spreading online. Henceforth, we are indeed in an age of an infodemic, where all aspects of our community can spread untruth messages easily, ultimately it is our responsibility to take ownership of these mistruths and speak up and stop the spread of misinformation around COVID-19. With more help from Social Media platforms and governments, we will be able to better inform our communities of the impact of misinformation and disinformation, and allow our communities the power to make more informed decisions. 

Referencing 

Flew, T., Dulleck, U., Park, A., Fisher, C., & Isler, O. (2020). Trust and Mistrust in Australian News Media.

Anderson, T., Dr. (2021, September 3). [Interview]. https://www.abc.net.au/cm/lb/13529110/data/health-data.pdf 

Hameleers, M., & van der Meer, T. G. L. A. (2019). Misinformation and polarization in a high-choice media environment: How effective are political fact-checkers? Communication Research, 47(2), 227–250. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650218819671

Jaworsky, B. N., & Qiaoan, R. (2020). The Politics of Blaming: The narrative battle between China and the US over COVID-19. Journal of Chinese Political Science, 26(2), 295–315. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-020-09690-8

Meta. (2020, March 25). Combating COVID-19 misinformation across our apps. Meta. https://about.fb.com/news/2020/03/combating-covid-19-misinformation/

Stempel, C., Hargrove, T., & Stempel, G. H., III. (2007). Media use, social structure, and belief in 9/11 conspiracy theories. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 84(2), 353–372. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769900708400210

WHO, W. H. O. (2021, April 27). Fighting misinformation in the time of COVID-19, one click at a time. World Health Organization: WHO. https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/fighting-misinformation-in-the-time-of-covid-19-one-click-at-a-time

WHO coronavirus (COVID-19) dashboard. (n.d.). WHO Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard With Vaccination Data. Retrieved March 29, 2022, from https://covid19.who.int/

World Health Organisation. (n.d.). The Covid-19 Infodemic (S. Bradd, Ed.). WHO. https://www.who.int/health-topics/infodemic/the-covid-19-infodemic#tab=tab_1

Yao, T., Qian, J., Zhu, W., Wang, Y., & Wang, G. (2020). A systematic review of lopinavir therapy for SARS coronavirus and MERS coronavirus—A possible reference for coronavirus disease‐19 treatment option. Journal of Medical Virology, 92(6), 556–563. https://doi.org/10.1002/jmv.25729