Cyber attacks and cyber (mis)information operations during a pandemic

Marko Milanovic and Michael N. Schmitt explain that the COVID-19 pandemic has starkly highlighted the need to further international cyber law discourse amongst states. Malicious cyber operations directed against medical facilities and capabilities and campaigns of misinformation have interfered with states’ abilities to effectively fight the virus and treat their populations. These acts can be qualified as violations of international law, at time violating the state sovereignty, intervening in state internal affairs, and even amounting to wrongful use of force. At the same time, states have a duty under human rights law to combat harmful cyber operations and misinformation campaigns by states and non-state actors alike. All states, human rights courts, human rights monitoring bodies, the academy, the private sector and NGOs must take up the challenge presented by this tragic pandemic to move the law governing cyberspace in the right direction

Co-Spread of Misinformation and Fact-Checking Content during the Covid-19 Pandemic

In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, the consequences of misinformation are a matter of life and death. Correcting misconceptions and false beliefs are important for injecting reliable information about the outbreak. Fact-checking organisations produce content with the aim of reducing misinformation spread, but our knowledge of its impact on misinformation is limited. In this paper, we explore the relation between misinformation and fact-checking spread during the Covid-19 pandemic. We specifically follow misinformation and fact-checks emerging from December 2019 to early May 2020. Through a combination of spread variance analysis, impulse response modelling and causal analysis, we show similarities in how misinformation and fact-checking information spread and that fact-checking information has a positive impact in reducing misinformation. However, we observe that its efficacy can be reduced, due to the general amount of online misinformation and the short-term spread of fact-checking information compared to misinformation

WhatsApp and audio misinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic

Given user choices and the commercial offerings of internet providers, WhatsApp has increasingly become established as a new standard for communication by audio, image, and text. This paper explores the role of misinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic by using content disseminated through WhatsApp, thereby making three main contributions: a discussion about the potential shift toward nontextual and nonvisual forms of misinformation; the new social role of audio, namely related to the critique of policies and political actors during the early stage of the Covid-19 pandemic; and the questioning of the First Draft News disinformation conceptual model by proposing a complementary approach that focuses only on factuality. Conclusions were drawn after conducting a content analysis of 988 units of Covid-19-related audio files, images, videos, and texts shared via WhatsApp during the early stage of the pandemic. A typology was identified to address distinct claims that focus on five different topics (society, policy and politics, health science, pandemic, and other), as well as audio messaging trending as a novel format for spreading misinformation. The results help us to contextualize and discuss a potential shift toward nontextual and nonvisual forms of misinformation, reflecting the increasing adoption of the audio format among WhatsApp users and making WhatsApp a fertile environment for the circulation and dissemination of misinformation regarding Covid-19-related themes. In a society characterized by the rapid consumption of information, the idea that content must have a degree of falsehood to mislead is an indicator of the distance between theoretical models and social reality. This indicator is important to identify true content as potential misinformation on the basis of its factuality

WhatsApp and audio misinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic

Given user choices and the commercial offerings of internet providers, WhatsApp has increasingly become established as a new standard for communication by audio, image, and text. This paper explores the role of misinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic by using content disseminated through WhatsApp, thereby making three main contributions: a discussion about the potential shift toward nontextual and nonvisual forms of misinformation; the new social role of audio, namely related to the critique of policies and political actors during the early stage of the Covid-19 pandemic; and the questioning of the First Draft News disinformation conceptual model by proposing a complementary approach that focuses only on factuality. Conclusions were drawn after conducting a content analysis of 988 units of Covid-19-related audio files, images, videos, and texts shared via WhatsApp during the early stage of the pandemic. A typology was identified to address distinct claims that focus on five different topics (society, policy and politics, health science, pandemic, and other), as well as audio messaging trending as a novel format for spreading misinformation. The results help us to contextualize and discuss a potential shift toward nontextual and nonvisual forms of misinformation, reflecting the increasing adoption of the audio format among WhatsApp users and making WhatsApp a fertile environment for the circulation and dissemination of misinformation regarding Covid-19-related themes. In a society characterized by the rapid consumption of information, the idea that content must have a degree of falsehood to mislead is an indicator of the distance between theoretical models and social reality. This indicator is important to identify true content as potential misinformation on the basis of its factuality.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Misinfodemic and cyberchondria experiences among Indians during COVID-19 pandemic

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has fuelled the surge of various kinds of misinformation, hoax, conspiracy theories and rumours which have challenged the health systems all over the globe. The present study explored how Indians responded to the Misinfodemic, as a notice as well as an information sharer during the deadly pandemic. The study also elucidated the cyberchondria experiences among the Indians due to the misinfodemic. An online survey questionnaire was used to identify the respondents and to collect the needed data for the study (N=266). The result showed that the majority of the participants noticed misinformation regarding the outbreak on various internet platforms predominantly social media. The misinformation led the participants to a spectrum of mental health issues like stress, anxiety, anger, insomnia and depression. 9.80% of participants admitted themselves sharing misinformation regarding the outbreak and men did more compared to females (16.9% to 9.2%) (t143.006 = 1.572, p =.001). The misinfodemic resulted in increasing the health anxiety of the participants and there was no significant difference among the gender in experiencing health anxiety. The findings of the study provide functional insights for advancing communication research through misinformation correction and misperception management during these kinds of unknown (medicine and treatment) pandemic situations.https://dorl.net/dor/20.1001.1.20088302.2022.20.3.15.2

MISINFORMATION AND COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on our world cannot be overstated. One of its noticeable features was the prominence of misinformation generally, and anti-vaccine misinformation more specifically. This article provides a breakdown of the five major themes of antivaccine misinformation and the way they were used to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt about COVID- 19 vaccines. Long before the pandemic, anti-vaccine activists argued using a five-part playbook. They argued that (1) vaccine preventable diseases were not really dangerous, (2) vaccines were dangerous and ineffective, (3) there were alternative treatments that were better than (dangerous and ineffective) vaccines, (4) there was a conspiracy to hide this information, and (5) the real issue is one of civil rights, not science. Their claims were based on misinformation before COVID-19, and anti-vaccine activists continued using the same themes, also based on misinformation, in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the pandemic created a moment of vulnerability that allowed anti-vaccine activists’ claims to have broader impact. By setting out the themes and tactics used by anti-vaccine activists and spelling out the factors that led to the moment of vulnerability during the pandemic, this article aims to arm legal actors—judges, lawyers, and scholars—with tools that would help identify anti-vaccine claims and tactics, and hopes to protect them from being misled

Misinformation and COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on our world cannot be overstated. One of its noticeable features was the prominence of misinformation generally, and anti-vaccine misinformation more specifically. This article provides a breakdown of the five major themes of antivaccine misinformation and the way they were used to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt about COVID- 19 vaccines. Long before the pandemic, anti-vaccine activists argued using a five-part playbook. They argued that (1) vaccine preventable diseases were not really dangerous, (2) vaccines were dangerous and ineffective, (3) there were alternative treatments that were better than (dangerous and ineffective) vaccines, (4) there was a conspiracy to hide this information, and (5) the real issue is one of civil rights, not science. Their claims were based on misinformation before COVID-19, and anti-vaccine activists continued using the same themes, also based on misinformation, in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the pandemic created a moment of vulnerability that allowed anti-vaccine activists’ claims to have broader impact. By setting out the themes and tactics used by anti-vaccine activists and spelling out the factors that led to the moment of vulnerability during the pandemic, this article aims to arm legal actors—judges, lawyers, and scholars—with tools that would help identify anti-vaccine claims and tactics, and hopes to protect them from being misled

An Exploratory Study of COVID-19 Misinformation on Twitter

During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media has become a home ground for misinformation. To tackle this infodemic, scientific oversight, as well as a better understanding by practitioners in crisis management, is needed. We have conducted an exploratory study into the propagation, authors and content of misinformation on Twitter around the topic of COVID-19 in order to gain early insights. We have collected all tweets mentioned in the verdicts of fact-checked claims related to COVID-19 by over 92 professional fact-checking organisations between January and mid-July 2020 and share this corpus with the community. This resulted in 1 500 tweets relating to 1 274 false and 276 partially false claims, respectively. Exploratory analysis of author accounts revealed that the verified twitter handle(including Organisation/celebrity) are also involved in either creating (new tweets) or spreading (retweet) the misinformation. Additionally, we found that false claims propagate faster than partially false claims. Compare to a background corpus of COVID-19 tweets, tweets with misinformation are more often concerned with discrediting other information on social media. Authors use less tentative language and appear to be more driven by concerns of potential harm to others. Our results enable us to suggest gaps in the current scientific coverage of the topic as well as propose actions for authorities and social media users to counter misinformation.Comment: 20 pages, nine figures, four tables. Submitted for peer review, revision