Regulating health communication in the post-truth era

As a global epidemic of the social media age, COVID-19 has also resulted in an “infodemic”, that means the uncontrolled spreading of false information about the health situation. Spreading of health information is a special intersection point of the freedom of speech, freedom of science and the fundamental right to life and health. The paper analyses the European and Hungarian legal framework of the health communication from multiple perspectives. The regulatory challenges and solutions are different concerning the professional health communication, the commercial communication and the health communication by laypersons. As with all forms of misinformation, private regulations of the platform operators have a significant regulatory role to play in relation to health disinformation. As a result of the analysis, the paper provides a detailed regulatory map that also covers private regulation solutions and explores the factors that need to be considered when designing a comprehensive future regulation

(Mis)communication? Social listening and the exclusion of marginalised voices

This article aims to contribute to the growing scholarship on the use of social media by humanitarian organisations in a crisis. Although social media’s role in times of crisis has been rigorously studied, much of this work looks at the distribution or collection of information by first-responders or relief organisations. However, there is a growing interest in the analysis of social media content to understand community perceptions and to guide public health and risk communication interventions. This article aims to explore some key limitations of data collected using Social Media Analytics (SMA) tools in fairly representing community-wide perceptions. Through a review of ‘social listening reports’ produced by UN bodies and international aid organisations, this article will explore whether these data deficiencies are fairly represented. This article concludes that while there are many well documented limitations in the use of social media discourse to holistically represent community perceptions, these limitations are not adequately discussed in the reporting produced from this data. Consequentially, users of this analysis cannot adequately weigh the quality of the data when using it to influence policy decisions

Systematic Literature Review on Driving Factors of COVID-19 Related Fake News Sharing on Social Media

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the news sharing behavior of social media users has exacerbated the proliferation of fake news, contributed to significant negative impacts on the public and society. This study aimed to explore the driving factors of COVID-19 related fake news sharing on social media and identify interventions to combat its dissemination. A systematic literature review under the guideline of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) was conducted using various databases, resulting in several key findings. Individual motivations such as information sharing, socialization, altruism, and self-promotion were identified as significant drivers of fake news sharing. Cognitive and emotional factors like trust in online information, perceived information overload, and social media exposure were also predictors of fake news sharing. Cultural and religious factors, as well as news content characteristics, were found to be correlated with COVID-19 fake news sharing. Facebook and WhatsApp emerged as the most commonly used platforms for sharing fake news. To address this issue, collaborative efforts are necessary involving individuals, social media platforms, technological institutions, governments, and public agencies. The study provides comprehensive insights into the driving factors behind COVID-19 related fake news sharing on social media and presents potential interventions to mitigate its spread. These findings can increase public awareness of the underlying reasons for fake news sharing and assist governments and public health institutions in devising strategies to handle fake news during future health crises

The Challenges of Responding to Misinformation during a Pandemic: content moderation and the limitations of the concept of harm

Social media have been central in informing people about the COVID-19 pandemic. They influence the ways in which information is perceived, communicated and shared online, especially with physical distancing measures in place. While these technologies have given people the opportunity to contribute to public discussions about COVID-19, the narratives disseminated on social media have also been characterised by uncertainty, disagreement, false and misleading advice. Global technology companies have responded to these concerns by introducing new content moderation policies based on the concept of harm to tackle the spread of misinformation and disinformation online. In this essay, we examine some of the key challenges in implementing these policies in real time and at scale, calling for more transparent and nuanced content moderation strategies to increase public trust and the quality of information about the pandemic consumed online

Infodemia, desinformação e fake news: o papel das bibliotecas na Sociedade da Pós-Verdade

This study’s purpose is to systematically review the literature to identify the most recent library practices against fake news. Previous findings showed most studies emphasize academic libraries practices and are mainly focused on information literacy instruction. This article updates prior research aiming to acknowledge the tangible practices of libraries, discuss their efficiency, and continue a categorization of those practices. It was performed a systematic literature review of the last 12 months (October 2020-September 2021) to retrieve the most recent library practices. After the extraction, with a final set of 17 documents, a multi-step qualitative analysis, and a categorization were developed. The current debate is still around information literacy strategies that intend to reiterate an authority-based source evaluation versus the challenge to recognize an emotional-based reaction to fake news in a post-truth world. The role of libraries is cornered in an instructional framework, while disinformation is pervasive in several information ecosystems. The role of libraries in a Post-truth society is still an open debate, yet there is almost a consensus that libraries should engage in partnerships and be part of a multidisciplinary approach.O objetivo deste estudo é rever sistematicamente a literatura para identificar as práticas mais recentes das bibliotecas contra as fake news. Resultados prévios mostraram que a maioria dos estudos enfatiza as práticas das bibliotecas do ensino superior e estão principalmente centrados na formação em literacia da informação. Este artigo atualiza uma investigação anterior com o objetivo de reconhecer as práticas tangíveis das bibliotecas, discutir a sua eficiência, e continuar uma categorização dessas práticas. Foi realizada uma revisão sistemática da literatura dos últimos 12 meses (Outubro 2020-Setembro 2021) para recuperar as práticas mais recentes das bibliotecas. Após a extração, com um conjunto final de 17 documentos, foi desenvolvida uma análise qualitativa em várias etapas e uma categorização. O debate atual continua em torno de estratégias de literacia da informação que pretendem reiterar uma avaliação das fontes baseada na autoridade versus o desafio de reconhecer uma reação emocional a notícias falsas num mundo de pós-verdade. O papel das bibliotecas está encurralado num quadro formativo, enquanto a desinformação invade vários ecossistemas de informação. O papel das bibliotecas na sociedade da pós-verdade é ainda um debate em aberto, mas existe quase um consenso de que as bibliotecas devem envolver-se em parcerias e fazer parte de uma abordagem multidisciplinar.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

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

RUMOURS AND INFODEMICS: JOURNALIST'S SOCIAL MEDIA VERIFICATION PRACTICES DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract.  The spread of rumors and infodemics on the Internet and social media during the Covid-19 pandemic which is unstoppable and usually believed to be the truth is more dangerous than the transmission of the Covid-19 outbreak because it has the potential to threaten safety, cause racism, and hatred of the community. It is the duty of  journalists to doing fact-checking and corrects any rumors or infodemics. Fact-checking is one of the most important elements of professional journalism. Technological advances have made infodemics spread rapidly which has become a new challenge for professional journalists as information agents and spearheads of accurate reporting. This became the basis for mass media companies such as Kompas.com and Solopos.com to form journalism team checks to verify the facts and infodemics rumors that circulated widely on the Internet and social media during the Covid-19 pandemic. Fact-checking journalism is a new trend in digital journalism studies. This paper reviews the work practices of fact-checking journalists in verifying infodemics from social media content as the spearhead of accurate reporting as well as a manifestation of hypermedia organizations. A series of qualitative interviews were conducted with journalists at Solopos.com and Kompas.com who were in charge of the fact-check section. The results showed that journalists carried out a series of processes both manually and utilizing digital technology in verifying content and checking several facts to ensure rumors and infodemics on social media about Covid-19 that were spread on social media be compiled into news using journalistic principles. The work process of fact-checking journalists is often done collaboratively to form hypermedia organizations.Keywords: rumors, infodemics, online journalism, fact-check, covid-19, journalism, journalists Abstrak. Persebaran rumor dan infodemik di Internet dan media sosial selama pandemi Covid-19 yang tidak terbendung dan sering kali diyakini sebagai kebenaran oleh masyarakat dinilai jauh lebih berbahaya daripada penularan wabah Covid-19, karena berpotensi mengancam keselamatan, menimbulkan rasisme, serta kebencian terhadap suatu golongan. Sudah menjadi tugas jurnalis dan untuk mengecek fakta dan meluruskan setiap rumor serta infodemik yang beredar di masyarakat. Pengecekan fakta adalah salah satu elemen penting dalam jurnalisme profesional. Kemajuan teknologi membuat infodemik tersebar dengan cepat yang kemudian menjadi tantangan baru bagi jurnalis profesional sebagai agen informasi dan ujung tombak pemberitaan yang akurat. Hal ini menjadi landasan bagi perusahaan media massa berskala nasional seperti Kompas.com maupun lokal, yaitu Solopos.com membentuk tim jurnalisme cek fakta untuk memverifikasi rumor serta infodemik yang beredar luas di internet dan media sosial. Jurnalisme cek fakta merupakan tren baru dalam perkembangan jurnalisme digital. Tulisan ini mengulas praktik kerja jurnalis pemeriksa fakta dalam memverifikasi infodemik dari konten media sosial sebagai ujung tombak pemberitaan yang akurat sekaligus sebagai manifestasi organisasi organisasi hipermedia. Serangkaian wawancara kualitatif dilakukan kepada jurnalis di Solopos.com dan Kompas.com yang bertugas sebagai jurnalis pemeriksa fakta. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan para jurnalis melakukan serangkaian proses verifikasi konten dan pengecekan fakta baik secara manual maupun memanfaatkan teknologi digital untuk mengkonfirmasi rumor serta infodemik tentang Covid-19 yang tersebar di media sosial untuk disusun dalam berita sesuai kaidah jurnalistik. Proses kerja jurnalis pemeriksa fakta ini sering kali dilakukan secara kolaboratif yang membentuk organisasi hipermedia.Kata kunci: rumor, infodemik, jurnalisme online, cek fakta, covid-19, jurnalisme, jurnali

What Facebook Messages Told Us About How We Handled Disaster Management during the COVID-19 Pandemic?

As COVID-19 continues, social media platforms such as Facebook have become an increasingly important tool for communication and information sharing for public and government agencies. The generic disaster management cycle (mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery) provides systematic guidance to the public and government agencies to respond to the crisis and suggest appropriate measures for different disaster stages. In this study, we examine various trending topics and themes during the COVID-19 outbreak. Using this generic disaster management cycle as our guiding framework, we examine news topics\u27 evolution during the COVID-19 pandemic on Facebook during each of the four phases. Guided Latent Dirichlet Allocation (Guided LDA) is used for topic modeling to identify topics and themes, and text network analytics is used to understand the connectedness of these news topics during each phase and their evolution

Multivariate Data Analysis and Social Media: a Contribution to Infodemic Management Optimization Strategy

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Statistics and Information Management, specialization in Information Analysis and ManagementAn infodemic is a huge flow of inaccurate and wrong information that may spread through social media, during an epidemic, potentially causing confusion and a damaging effect on peoples’ behavior and health. It also makes the intervention of public health agents more difficult. An infodemic can intensify outbreaks as it makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it. The study's main objective was to characterize the individual engagement performance of social media posts published before and during the Covid19 pandemic (before and after vaccination) on Facebook’s pages of selected national health organizations in order to identify a typology of agencies. Publicly available data on 39525 posts from 17 health agencies Facebook’s pages between 01/01/2019 and 31/05/2022 was retrieved and analysed with univariate and bivariate exploratory data analysis, text analysis methods and multivariate exploratory data analysis methods such as principal components analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis. Results showed that globally the Covid19 pandemic led to a relevant increase in the number of posts published on the health agencies’ Facebook pages under study and also led to a large increase on the respective audiences’ interactions. However, there was a decrease in the engagement on the pandemic period after start of the vaccination, compared to the period of the actual pandemic. Furthermore, we identified 3 types of agencies: agencies with predominance performance in total interactions, agencies with higher and lower performance in relative engagement, and finally, agencies with an opposing performance between the pandemic period and the period of mass vaccination. In short, with the Covid-19 pandemic, the public looked for more information through Facebook. Nonetheless, there might be a link between the differences in performance from these pages and different infodemics strategies. Despite some limitations, our study provides valuable insights to health agencies and the public in general, as the infodemic management should not end after the crisis but should be an ongoing investment and may represent one of the best ways to make a more effective and competent health promotion