Misinformation, Crisis, and Public Health—Reviewing the Literature

Starbird, Kate; Spiro, Emma S.; Koltai, Kolina

doi:10.35650/md.2063.d.2020

Cited by 23 publications

(30 citation statements)

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“…Mainstream parenting communities are connected into conspiracy theories not primarily through vaccine safety, but by the control they feel they can have over the immune system of their children. Our findings complement the many valuable studies that focus on individual pieces of misinformation, individual communities, individual user accounts and news sources 4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,17,18,19,20,21,22,23 . They also align with Ward et al's emphasis that effective messaging and intervention must account for the granular details, such as inequalities and differentiations between the actual communities to which people belong 24,25 .…”

supporting

confidence: 67%

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(4) Several have administrators from across the globe, as shown, allowing them to easily shift their content across locations and inject local knowledge. (5) Several have a simultaneous presence on other platforms, where they direct their users to more extreme unmoderated discussions. Fig.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and misinformation

Johnson

Velásquez

Restrepo

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Parents - particularly moms - increasingly consult social media for support when taking decisions about their young children, and likely also when advising other family members such as elderly relatives. Minimizing malignant online influences is therefore crucial to securing their assent for policies ranging from vaccinations, masks and social distancing against the pandemic, to household best practices against climate change, to acceptance of future 5G towers nearby. Here we show how a strengthening of bonds across online communities during the pandemic, has led to non-Covid-19 conspiracy theories (e.g. fluoride, chemtrails, 5G) attaining heightened access to mainstream parent communities. Alternative health communities act as the critical conduits between conspiracy theorists and parents, and make the narratives more palatable to the latter. We demonstrate experimentally that these inter-community bonds can perpetually generate new misinformation, irrespective of any changes in factual information. Our findings show explicitly why Facebook's current policies have failed to stop the mainstreaming of non-Covid-19 and Covid-19 conspiracy theories and misinformation, and why targeting the largest communities will not work. A simple yet exactly solvable and empirically grounded mathematical model, shows how modest tailoring of mainstream communities' couplings could prevent them from tipping against establishment guidance. Our conclusions should also apply to other social media platforms and topics.

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supporting

confidence: 67%

“…

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and misinformation

Johnson

Velásquez

Restrepo

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…Misinformation has caused widespread lack of understanding of major public health issues, sometimes resulting in life-or-death impacts (28).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infodemiology: Computational Methodologies for Quantifying and Visualizing Key Characteristics of the COVID-19 Infodemic

Ligot

Fc²,

Toledo³

et al. 2021

SSRN Journal

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Objectives. Infodemics of false information on social media is a growing societal problem, aggravated by the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic. The development of infodemics has characteristic resemblances to epidemics of infectious diseases. This paper presents several methodologies which aim to measure the extent and development of infodemics through the lens of epidemiology.Methods. Time varying R was used as a measure for the infectiousness of the infodemic, topic modeling was used to create topic clouds and topic similarity heat maps, while network analysis was used to create directed and undirected graphs to identify super-spreader and multiple carrier communities on social media.Results. Forty-two (42) latent topics were discovered. Reproductive trends for a specific topic were observed to have significantly higher peaks (R t 4-5) than general misinformation (R t 1-3).From a sample of social media misinformation posts, a total of 385 groups and 804 connections were found within the network, with the largest group having 1,643 shares and 1,063,579 interactions over a 12 month period.Conclusions. These approaches enable the measurement of the infectiousness of an infodemic, comparative analysis of infodemic topics, and identification of likely super-spreaders and multiple carriers on social media. The results of these analyses can form the basis for taking action to stem an ongoing spread of misinformation on social media and mitigate against future infodemics. The methods are not confined to health misinformation and may be applied to other infodemics, such as conspiracy theories, political disinformation, and climate change denial.

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“…Global pandemics, fortunately, occur only rarely and as a result, there have been few opportunities to explore the role of information in influencing public attitudes and behaviors in this type of situation. The information environment that exists at the time of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 in 2020 is very different from that which existed during previous pandemics such as the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919 and even the SARS pandemic of 2002-2003. In this new environment, individuals have immediate access to unprecedented amounts of information from various official and unofficial sources, with much or most of this received in digital format through social media and other online information channels (Starbird et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Information in Influencing Public Attitudes and Behaviors in a Global Pandemic

Al-Suqri¹,

Salmi²,

Shabibi³

2021

oaihssr

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Purpose of the Study: This study aims to identify key insights from the emerging academic literature relating to the role of information during COVID-19, especially information obtained via social media, and to consider their implications for the authorities responsible for pandemic management. Methodology: The research is based on a thematic review of 34 academic papers published during the first six months of 2020 when COVID-19 was spreading globally. Main Findings: The findings demonstrate the critical influence of information as an influence on public attitudes and behaviors in a pandemic, and the important role played by social media in the dissemination of information in this context. They highlight the problem of vast volumes of misinformation and fake news circulating on social media sites and how this can undermine efforts by the authorities to manage the pandemic. Social Implications: The research findings demonstrate the need for the authorities to utilize social media to counterbalance misinformation and fake news regarding the pandemic, but also highlight the importance of employing a range of information channels and messaging formats to effectively reach and engage all demographic groups. They suggest that key influencers including healthcare experts, high profile public figures, and social media influencers can play an important role in the dissemination of accurate and reliable information on behalf of the authorities in ways that support rather than hinder pandemic management. Originality/Novelty of the Study: Global pandemics have historically occurred only rarely and this is the first to occur in a new information environment in which people receive much of their information via the Internet and social media. A considerable number of academic papers relevant to this study were published in the first half of 2020, providing an early and unique opportunity to synthesize the key themes and findings and provide helpful insights on the use of social media and other information channels for pandemic management.

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Misinformation, Crisis, and Public Health—Reviewing the Literature

Cited by 23 publications

References 0 publications

Mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and misinformation

Mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and misinformation

Infodemiology: Computational Methodologies for Quantifying and Visualizing Key Characteristics of the COVID-19 Infodemic

The Role of Information in Influencing Public Attitudes and Behaviors in a Global Pandemic

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