An exploration of how fake news is taking over social media and putting public health at risk (original) (raw)
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Untangling between fake-news and truth in social media to understand the Covid-19 Coronavirus
2020 IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC)
Covid-19 is a virus developed to rule the world" is just one of the many fake-news published on the Web. In this pandemic period, the Web is flooded with real news, allegedly true or blatantly false. To understand how fake news is affecting the Covid-19 perception, we selected 40 news (either true or fake) related to the origin, diffusion, treatment and effects of Covid-19 and we asked 293 volunteers to express their opinion on the truthfulness of the news. Then, we propose an Awareness index to compute knowledge degree of the volunteers. The results highlight a large ignorance on medical news, ignorance that goes beyond educational background. The study highlights the need for Health Institution to enter social media platforms in order to clearly explain what is true and what is false on Covid-19.
Scientific ways to confront covid-19 fake news
Saude E Sociedade, 2022
Parallel to the covid-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization warns of an infodemic of fake news related to the disease. This integrative review investigates the dimension of this phenomenon and how science found ways to confront it. A bibliographic search was conducted on the Scopus/Elsevier and Medline/PubMed databases, retrieving 23 articles. Literature analysis found that fake news provide false social support and mobilize feelings which make them more acceptable than the truth. Hence, social media and the internet emerge as platforms to spread false information. Research suggests that government and media institutions can use communication channels and monitoring and infoveillance technologies as allies to alert, elucidate, and remove misleading content. We find the need of investments in scientific and digital literacy actions so people may assess the quality of the information they receive. Finally, this study proposes the adoption of creative strategies to foster reasoning skills together with scientific information translated into an accessible language, preferably approved by health and institutional authorities.
An Analysis of the Academic Literature on Fake News During COVID-19 Pandemic
Journal of Contemporary Social Science Research, 2020
Covid-19-related fake news has brought many negative impacts in the global community in many different aspects. The spread of the novel coronavirus which initially started in 2019, and that later was announced as a pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO), has resulted in the emergence of infodemic causing difficulties to governments and subjects. This study was carried out to identify the subject areas of research ever conducted which related to fake news on Covid-19 and the impacts caused by this false information phenomenon. Literature analysis of documents published in the SCOPUS online database has been conducted and it was found that previous research on Covid-19-related misinformation occurred in multiple subject areas of which are prominent in the medicine and social sciences field. The impact of this infodemic ranges from health, political, legal, and other social effects. It can be concluded that in order to minimise the confusion and risks of the infodemic, the digital and health literacy of the citizen has to be improved, apart from the government responsibilities and social media providers monitoring and controlling the dissemination of falsehood and rumours among various parties.
Journal of Public Health
Purpose As the new coronavirus disease propagated around the world, the rapid spread of news caused uncertainty in the population. False news has taken over social media, becoming part of life for many people. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate, through a systematic review, the impact of social media on the dissemination of infodemic knowing and its impacts on health. Methods A systematic search was performed in the MedLine, Virtual Health Library (VHL), and Scielo databases from January 1, 2020, to May 11, 2021. Studies that addressed the impact of fake news on patients and healthcare professionals around the world were included. It was possible to methodologically assess the quality of the selected studies using the Loney and Newcastle-Ottawa Scales. Results Fourteen studies were eligible for inclusion, consisting of six cross-sectional and eight descriptive observational studies. Through questionnaires, five studies included measures of anxiety or psychological distress caused by misinformation; another seven assessed feeling fear, uncertainty, and panic, in addition to attacks on health professionals and people of Asian origin. Conclusion By analyzing the phenomenon of fake news in health, it was possible to observe that infodemic knowledge can cause psychological disorders and panic, fear, depression, and fatigue.
COVID-19, a tale of two pandemics: novel coronavirus and fake news messaging
Health Promotion International
Summary The emergence of COVID-19, caused by novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, became a pandemic in just 10 weeks. Without effective medications or vaccines available, authorities turned toward mitigation measures such as use of face masks, school’s closings, shelter-in-place, telework and social distancing. People found refuge on the internet and social media apps; however, there was a proliferation of instant messaging containing hoaxed, deliberate misleading information: fake news messaging (FNM). The aim of this study was to assess FNM through content analysis and to discriminate them in a proposed taxonomy structure. A sample of convenience of messages, memes, tweets or cartoons in several languages was selected from the most popular social media outlets, i.e. Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter etc. More than 300 FNM were identified. Descriptive statistics were used for highlighting potential relationships between variables. Content analysis determined that FNM could be divided into Healt...
Impact of Fake News and Myths Related to COVID-19
Journal of Content Community and Communication, 2020
With the advent of the internet and the subsequent increase in use and accessibility, the social media networks have particularly emphasised in terms of the news being shred online. However, this has caused a drastic change in the assessment and obtaining of the real information. Hence, this paper has aimed to assess the impacts of fake news and myths regarding the novel Covid-19 pandemic. Through the systematic review of the related studies and support through relevant literature, the findings of the research include various harmful impacts of the notion. This ranges from small impacts such as spread of misinformation to more sinister impacts such as the wrongful utilisation of drugs for curing the disease. Moreover, the paper also mentions the various motives behind the spread of such false information, primarily fuelled by collecting monetary benefits in terms of digital marketing, etc. Overall, the study concludes the impacts of spread of fake news and myths are generally harmfu...
Impact of rumors or misinformation on coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in social media
International journal of health sciences, 2022
Introduction: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a respiratory tract illness resulting from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, which has spread all over the globe, making it a major public health challenge across health systems. Simultaneously, numerous rumors, misinformation, and hoaxes appeared on several social media platforms regarding the etiology, outcomes, prevention, and cure of the disease1. The pressing issue is fake news spread more rapidly in social media than the ones from reliable sources and damages the authenticity balance of news ecosystem. Methodology: These articles contained diverse study methods (survey, content analysis, interview, literature review & others) and paradigm models (quantitative, qualitative) to identify the widespread misinformation and its impacts. Conclusion: Mainstream media platforms mostly contain fake news and rumors. The long-standing issue of misinformation regarding different socio-political i...
Social Media, Misinformation and Covid-19
2021
Social media has come as a boon, and as curse of spreading false news Fake news has always been on the horizon even earlier Only difference is that the fake news in earlier times was more risky and dangerous Because in those times, identifying the fake news was not only difficult but propagating about it was also difficult In these times, even though we have fake news the controlling measures are better and convincing people about them easy With Covid-19, the pandemic in a century, people saw the havoc fake news can play The paper defines, classifies Fake news It discusses all the measures taken by various social media to address this issue It also broadly gives an overview of the technical measures taken to address the issue © 2021 Karadeniz Technical University All rights reserved
Journal of Computational Social Science
Misinformation in the media is produced by hard-to-gauge thought mechanisms employed by individuals or collectivities. In this paper, we shed light on what the country-specific factors of falsehood production in the context of COVID-19 Pandemic might be. Collecting our evidence from the largest misinformation dataset used in the COVID-19 misinformation literature with close to 11,000 pieces of falsehood, we explore patterns of misinformation production by employing a variety of methodological tools including algorithms for text similarity, clustering, network distances, and other statistical tools. Covering news produced in a span of more than 14 months, our paper also differentiates itself by its use of carefully controlled hand-labeling of topics of falsehood. Findings suggest that country-level factors do not provide the strongest support for predicting outcomes of falsehood, except for one phenomenon: in countries with serious press freedom problems and low human development, the mostly unknown authors of misinformation tend to focus on similar content. In addition, the intensity of discussion on animals, predictions and symptoms as part of fake news is the biggest differentiator between nations; whereas news on conspiracies, medical equipment and risk factors offer the least explanation to differentiate. Based on those findings, we discuss some distinct public health and communication strategies to dispel misinformation in countries with particular characteristics. We also emphasize that a global action plan against misinformation is needed given the highly globalized nature of the online media environment.