Fighting the COVID-19 Infodemic in Social Media: A Holistic Perspective and a Call to Arms

Understand

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, people turned to social media to read and to share timely information including statistics, warnings, advice, and inspirational stories.

• Unfortunately, alongside all this useful information, there was also a new blending of medical and political misinformation and disinformation, which gave rise to the first global infodemic.
• While fighting this infodemic is typically thought of in terms of factuality, the problem is much broader as malicious content includes not only fake news, rumors, and conspiracy theories, but also promotion of fake cures, panic, racism, xenophobia, and mistrust in the authorities, among others.
• This is a complex problem that needs a holistic approach combining the perspectives of journalists, fact-checkers, policymakers, government entities, social media platforms, and society as a whole.