Pandemic -A raison d'être for 'Infodemic' and Media Literacy -'solus solutio' (original) (raw)

2021, Rethinking Media and Socio-Cultural Change: India and The Globe in the Times of Pandemic

The ‘infodemic’ word was coined and first used by WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a Conference in Munich on 15th Feb, 2020. He said, “We are not just fighting an epidemic, we are fighting an infodemic”(“Immunizing the public against misinformation,” 2020). This ‘infodemic’ has created more fear among people than the pandemic itself. In common understanding we can say that fear factor combined with fake news on social media creates ‘infodemic’. It is even more pertinent to quote here that the consumption of social media increased 50 times during pandemic. As a result a huge presence of fake news was witnessed during lockdown; conspiracy theories were constructed, magical remedies were suggested, hoax messages were spread. Governments, Media, Social Media Sites, Media Schools, Civil Society… are still grappling with it. Phenomenon of Fake News almost took Center Stage during this time. From just two in the third week of January 2020, the instances of debunked misinformation rose to 60 by the first week of April 2020, according to one study (Break Fake Toons, 2020). There are various reasons for this situation such as; people are not habituated to search for genuine content; they tend to believe whatever coming to them easily; consumption habits of people have changed drastically, sometimes care for loved ones also inspires them, Me first syndrome, monetisation of content and sadistic attitude of some people cannot be ruled out. Fake information virus is so powerful that according to a recent campaign ‘Break the fake’; fake information reaches to 1500 people much faster than true information almost like a virus (ibid). Although all big international digital giants are running campaigns to educate people about fake information and how to debunk them with the use of tools like Reverse image search by Google, Yandex, Baidu, TinEye; RevEye; Watchframebyframe; InVid; Twitterdeck etc and some organisations dedicated to debunking of fake information have been established such as altnews. Boomlive, vishwasnews.com; the only ever lasting solution for neutralising this infodemic seems to be media literacy. Unless the audiences get mature and develop the abilities to decipher media messages, the problems of fake information will keep haunting us. Even though most of the fake information created in India is still technologically induced messages of the primary order and yet we are not able to handle them, then how would we fight the multilayered, deep seated meaning inducing messages. We do not realise that the information we receive everyday through the vast network of media; although appears to be simple, and easy to understand; actually in reality, it is created in a complex audio-visual ‘language’ with its own set of grammar. The language of word, pictures, moving pictures and music can be used to express many-layered concepts and ideas about the world. It can also be used to create false ideas and notions as everything may not be obvious at first. The images fly by the mind’s eye and stay on in the deep recesses of our mind. If we wish to be able to navigate our lives through this multi-media culture, we need to be fluent in ‘reading’ and ‘writing’ the language of images and sounds just as we have always been able to ‘read’ and ‘write’ the printed language (Selvan, 2020). Media literacy aims to help look at the media experience from multiple perspectives, which also includes one’s own educated opinion about media messages. Media literacy does not tell anyone to not interact with the media. It only teaches how to interact carefully, think critically and understand intelligently. Thus this chapter would try to explore and propose a long lasting solution of deluge of fake information in general and infodemic in particular. The debate between uses of technological tools versus deciphering messages by using the power of media literacy to fight with fake information would also be discussed here and a feasible way-out would be tried to be devised on the basis of existing literature, text and cases.