Facade of media and social media during COVID-19: A review

Abstract

A novel coronavirus (COVID-19) arose in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. Soon it spread to other countries worldwide to become a pandemic. Globally, governments enforced quarantine and social distancing measures to prevent the spread of the infection. Mass media and social media platforms played a crucial role in providing information regarding the Coronavirus. Since little is known about COVID-19, various fake news, misinformation and rumours spread across the digital media that panicked people into making panic decisions. The rapid spread of misinformation and stories via social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube became a vital concern of the government and public health authorities. Medical misinformation and unverifiable content about the COVID-19 pandemic are spreading on social media at an unprecedented pace. Mitigating the advent of rumours and misinformation during the COVID-19 epidemic is crucial, since misinformation and fake news creates panic, fear and anxiety among people, predisposing them to various mental health conditions. Instead of considering social media as a secondary medium, it should be utilised to convey important information. Besides, it allows citizens to address their queries directly. Several governments across the world have taken actions to contain the pandemic of misinformation, yet measures are required to prevent such communication complications.

Creative social media use for Covid-19 prevention in Bangladesh: a structural equation modeling approach

“…These authors emphasize that creative use of social media helps all segments of people, i.e., general mass, patients, students and kids in schools to be informed of Covid-19 precautions online, which finally induces Covid-19 prevention. On the other hand, our study findings are incoherent with Srivastava et al (2020); Islam, Sarkar, et al (2020a, b, c, d); Tasnim et al (2020); Naeem et al (2020); Soltaninejad (2020) and Lin et al (2020) who highlight that social media use fuels the rush of enormous rumors, misinformation, hoaxes relating to virus prevention, etiology, cure and consequences. These types of misinformation promote wrong human behaviors that resulted in the spread of the virus and unpredicted mental and physical health effects.…”

Is COVID-19 Immune to Misinformation? A Brief Overview

“…Nonetheless, media critics and researchers widely discussed misinformation sources, especially new media (Sahni and Sharma 2020), and validated the argumentation with the relevant studies witnessing digital media's role in spreading misinformation (Srivastava et al 2020). As noted by Jamieson et al (2020), there is a significant relationship between the lethality of the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation, and mass media.…”

The Mass Media Freedom in a State of Emergency: Infodemic vs. COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Freedom of informing includes free access to information, freedom to receive and communicate information. The Constitution guarantees freedom of establishment of institutions for public information, the right to reply in the means of public informing, the right to protect a source of information in means for public informing and prohibit censorship (Stojanovska-Stefanova et al, 2017b).…”

“…The second concept is that, according to Chomsky, the public is banned in the management of its obligations and the information is strictly controlled. It may sound strange, but it is important to know that the second concept is the one that prevails (Stojanovska-Stefanova et al, 2017a).…”