Coronavirus Goes Viral: Quantifying the COVID-19 Misinformation Epidemic on Twitter

Kouzy, Ramez; Jaoude, Joseph Abi; Kraitem, Afif; Alam, Molly B. El; Karam, Basil S.; Adib, Elio; Zarka, Jabra; Traboulsi, Cindy; Akl, Elie W; Baddour, Khalil

doi:10.7759/cureus.7255

Cited by 668 publications

(616 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…A common trope on the recent literature about the new pandemic is the excess of information, especially bad or incorrect, about it, creating what some have called an "infodemic" 4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 .…”

Section: Epidemic Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trying to make sense out of chaos: science, politics and the COVID-19 pandemic

Camargo

2020

Cad. Saúde Pública

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This essay discusses the proliferation of discourses about the COVID-19 pandemic, presenting the challenges both to science and public policies that such an information overload present, having Collins' sociology of expertise as a theoretical framework. Science; Communications Media; Internet; Social Media ENSAIO ESSAYThis article is published in Open Access under the Creative Commons Attribution license, which allows use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, without restrictions, as long as the original work is correctly cited.Camargo Jr. KR 2 Cad. Saúde Pública 2020; 36(5):e00088120The past as prologue "What experience and history teach is this -that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it" (Georg Hegel). Addressing the UN General Assembly in 1987, Jonathan Mann, then director of the Special Programme on AIDS, made the historical remark about the three epidemics 1 : first the propagation of the virus itself, then the irruption of the disease, and finally the social, cultural, economic and political reactions. Mutatis mutandis, this is a reference framework that could be applied to the current pandemic, albeit the second epidemic is not so distant from the first as it was with HIV and AIDS.In this essay, the focus is on the third epidemic, an epidemic of meaning, borrowing from the analysis made by Paula Treichler in the heart of the storm, in her aptly titled book How to Have Theory in an Epidemic 2 . She pointed out how the social dimensions of the AIDS epidemic were far more relevant than one might think, even when acknowledging the central role of biomedicine in the response of that other pandemic. Treichler at one point lists 38 different meanings attributed to AIDS, ranging from the absurd to the outrageous, many of which could apply to the present situation 2 . Leveraged to support discrimination, used as a sort of pedagogic resource to put forward moral theses, and rife with conspiracy theories, those were ideas that circulated wildly in the media then. Similar cultural and mediatic processes are taking place now with COVID-19, the biggest difference with the present is, obviously, the massive presence of Internet-mediated social networks, which were still in its infancy back then.The proliferation of narratives creates a crowded field, making much harder the task of making sense of the prevailing cacophony and finding trustworthy guidelines for action. This is an attempt to reflect about this situation, albeit having in mind a caveat about the risk of bringing critical reflections to such an unstable landscape, as pointed out in a quite satirical piece recently published in the academic blog Somatosphere: "in the haste to manufacture mental personal protective equipment against the Coronascene, it is all too easy to make mistakes, to mass produce instead fatuity, guesswork, and irrelevance" 3 .

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Section: Epidemic Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trying to make sense out of chaos: science, politics and the COVID-19 pandemic

Camargo

2020

Cad. Saúde Pública

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“…As of April 20, 2020, already seven (7) papers on the topic of tracking and forecasting COVID-19 using Google Trends data have been published, according to PubMed (advanced search: covid AND google trends) [22], monitoring, analyzing, or forecasting COVID-19 in several regions like Taiwan [23], China [24][25], Europe [26][27], USA [27][28], Iran [27,29]. Note that for Twitter publications related to the COVID-19 pandemic, eight papers (8) are online up to this point (PubMed advanced search: covid AND twitter [22]), published from March 13 to April 20, 2020 [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. Table 1 consists of the systematic reporting of COVID-19 Google Trends studies, in the order of the reported publication date.…”

Section: Cases Deathsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the predictability of COVID-19 in USA: A Google Trends analysis

Mavragani¹,

Gillas²

2020

Preprint

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During the difficult times that the world is facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has already had severe consequences in all aspects of our lives, it is imperative to explore novel approaches of monitoring and forecasting the regional outbreaks as they happen or even before they do. In this paper, the first approach of exploring the role of Google query data in the predictability of COVID-19 in the US at both national and state level is presented. The results indicate that Google Trends correlate with COVID-19 data, while the estimated models exhibit strong predictability of COVID-19. In line with previous work that has argued on the value of online real-time data in the monitoring and forecasting epidemics and outbreaks, it is evident that such infodemiology approaches can assist public health policy makers, in order to address the most crucial issue; that of flattening the curve, allocating health resources, and increasing the effectiveness and preparedness of the respective health care systems.

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“…That the best performing readability score found only 37% of webpages readable to a universal audience does not re ect well for the health information produced and disseminated online. This poor readability level affects understanding of the health information; resulting in poor adherence to hygiene measures, socialdistancing measures, and further public health recommendations 5 .…”

Section: A Government Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many webpages provide inaccurate or questionable information and this can be harmful 3 . A small number of studies have already reported on the quality of COVID-19 related health information 4 , and indeed the misinformation that has appeared on webpages and in particular on social media in recent months 3,5 . The quality of information relating to COVID-19 assessed found that there are often discrepancies between health information issued by public health organisation and general information available on other digital media 6 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Online Readability of COVID-19 Health Information

Worrall¹,

Connolly²,

O’Neill³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Introduction: The internet is now the first line source of health information for many people worldwide. In the current Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic, health information is being produced, revised, updated and disseminated at an increasingly rapid rate. The general public are faced with a plethora of misinformation regarding COVID-19 and the readability of online information has an impact on their understanding of the disease. The accessibility of online healthcare information relating to COVID-19 is unknown.Methods: The Google® search engine was used to collate the first twenty webpage URLs for three individual searches for ‘COVID’, ‘COVID-19’, and ‘coronavirus’ from Ireland, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. The Gunning Fog Index (GFI), Flesch-Kincaid Grade (FKG) Score, Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES), Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) score were calculated to assess the readability.Results: There were poor levels of readability webpages reviewed, with only 17.2% of webpages at a universally readable level. There was a significant difference in readability between the different webpages based on their information source (p <0.01). Public Health organisations and Government organisations provided the most readable COVID-19 material, while digital media sources were significantly less readable. There were no significant differences in readability between regions.Conclusion: Much of the general public have relied on online information during the pandemic. Information on COVID-19 should be made more readable, and those writing webpages and information tools should ensure universal accessibility is considered in their production. Governments and healthcare practitioners should have an awareness of the online sources of information available, and ensure that readability of our own productions is at a universally readable level which will increase understanding and adherence to health guidelines.

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Coronavirus Goes Viral: Quantifying the COVID-19 Misinformation Epidemic on Twitter

Cited by 668 publications

References 10 publications

Trying to make sense out of chaos: science, politics and the COVID-19 pandemic

Trying to make sense out of chaos: science, politics and the COVID-19 pandemic

On the predictability of COVID-19 in USA: A Google Trends analysis

Online Readability of COVID-19 Health Information

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