Equipping Students and Beyond with Sound COVID‐19 Knowledge to Survive and Thrive Despite the Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID‐19 pandemic necessitated the understanding of the infodemic for making informed decisions. Limiting the spread of health misinformation and disinformation was the primary goal of the health informatics project. The project became the recipient of the ASIS&T “Chapter Innovation of the Year Award 2021”. A repertoire of online and offline initiatives was carried out with 9 well‐researched videos for promoting health informatics. Since August 2021, thousands of academics, librarians, teachers, parents, and students from 16 countries and regions were invited to be science communicators to create and disseminate accurate health information in their areas through an international digital story writing competition. In this paper, we will discuss the strategies of responding to the information crisis, including employing interventions that protect against the infodemic and mitigate its harmful effects, to strengthen the resilience of individuals and communities in dealing with it in an information‐resilient society.

Do students look for information differently? Information-seeking behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…This has supported the findings of Mayweg-Paus et al ’s (2021) study where they discussed that the potentially conflicting online COVID-19 information, for example, seeking, evaluating and using online information about COVID-19, students need to handle a vast amount of complex and uncertain information. The information-seeking process becomes difficult during COVID-19 time because of a plethora of health-related rumors, fake news and other misinformation which are identified by Chan et al (2021) in their project on “Dealing with COVID-19 and saving people’s lives in South Asia (SA) areas & beyond – A health informatics promotion project” in the South Asian context. Finally, under the RQ5 , we have examined and found there are some significant differences among the student groups in terms of their gender, academic level, age, where they live and their place of origin concerning their opinion on choosing the COVID-19 information sources during COVID-19.…”

Current issues and status of mis/disinformation in the health library context: a rapid literature review

“…Firstly, authors referred to types of mis/disinformation that fell under definitions, synonyms, or categories of misinformation, encompassing terms such as falsehoods, deceptive or baseless information, misinformation circulated online or on social media, fake news, and generally any content characterised as disinformative, pseudohistorical, or pseudoscientific (Bianchini et al, 2019;Herrero-Diz & Lopez-Rufino, 2021;Jaeger & Taylor, 2021;Schneider et al, 2020). Publication date of articles* COVID-19-related misinformation Eight papers addressed COVID-19-related misinformation, discussing aspects such as the infodemic -characterised by an overabundance of information, including misinformation (Allen, 2021;Chan et al, 2022;Charbonneau & Vardell, 2022;Epstein, 2022;Morgan-Daniel et al, 2020;Naeem et al, 2021;. These papers highlighted false claims pertaining to the virus, its transmission, treatments, and prevention.…”

“…For instance, one group in Italy collaborated with the national health service to establish a web portal dedicated to offering accurate health information to the public and dispelling false news (Barbaro et al, 2022). Another team engaged in an international, cross-disciplinary project aimed at raising awareness about COVID-19 through the creation of videos and workshops (Chan et al, 2022).…”

“…Libraries commonly engage in curation and training. Four articles discussed the curation of resources, emphasising terms like trustworthy, authoritative, and best evidence, particularly in the context of COVID-19 (Akers, 2018;Chan et al, 2022;Charbonneau & Vardell, 2022;Epstein, 2022). Quality assessment, specifically highlighting the prominence of retraction notices in digital databases, was addressed in one article (Schneider et al, 2020).…”

“…Additionally, four articles highlighted training initiatives within health libraries, focusing on educating individuals to search for and identify quality information while discerning fake news (Chan et al, 2022;Herrero-Diz & Lopez-Rufino, 2021;Kim et al, 2011;Naeem & Bhatti, 2020). One article proposed leveraging reference services to assist patrons in developing skills to evaluate information resources (Charbonneau & Vardell, 2022).…”