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WHO Public Health Research Agenda for Managing Infodemics

Geneva: World Health Organization (WHO) (2021), xii, 53 pp.

"The five research streams are listed below. For each stream, three top research questions were identified, resulting in a list of 15 top priority research questions for the public health research agenda for infodemic management. Further, we listed for each subcategory a second tier of important res ... more

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Combating Disinformation in the Arab World. Case Study: The COVID-19 Pandemic

Noha Atef

Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ); Friedrich Naumann Foundation (2021), 43 pp.

"In this paper, ARIJ proposes the following recommendations which target the greater media community. This includes media institutions concerned with the press, unions, press unions and donors who support this venture. We maintain that disinformation is a product of a social and political environmen ... more

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COVID-19 Discourse on Twitter in Four Asian Countries: Case Study of Risk Communication

Sungkyu Park, Sungwon Han, Kim, Jeongwook, Majid Molaie et al.

Journal of Medical Internet Research, volume 23, issue 3: e23272 (2021), 17 pp.

"COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2, has led to a global pandemic. The World Health Organization has also declared an infodemic (ie, a plethora of information regarding COVID-19 containing both false and accurate information circulated on the internet). Hence, it has become critical to test the veracity ... more

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“Fake News”, Religion, and COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh

Rubal Kanozia, Ritu Arya

Media Asia, volume 48, issue 4 (2021), pp. 313-321

"Salali and Uysal (2020) found in their study that vaccine acceptance significantly increased when people believe in the natural origin of the virus. Therefore, mis/disinformation and conspiracy theories about how the virus started need to be debunked, especially in countries having high vaccine hes ... more

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Ill Advice: A Case Study in Facebook’s Failure to Tackle COVID-19 Disinformation

Aoife Gallagher, Macckenzie Hart, Ciarán O'Connor

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2021), 34 pp.

"Despite detailed policies on mis- and disinformation and promises to enforce them, social media platforms are failing to tackle prominent groups and individuals who spread false claims about COVID-19 and vaccines online. Using the World Doctors Alliance1 as a case study, a group that has spread var ... ious problematic, false and conspiratorial claims about COVID-19 and vaccines, ISD found that 78% of the group’s 1.2 million online followers are found on mainstream platforms (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok) who claim to prohibit this kind of content. The Facebook pages of World Doctors Alliance members have a following of over 550,000 users, which increased by 13,215% between January 2020 and July 2021. Videos posted by these Facebook pages have been viewed more than 21.1 million times. These pages have accumulated a total of 5.77 million interactions since January 2020, with interaction rates increasing by 85% in the first six months of 2021 compared to the previous six months. Facebook posts mentioning the World Doctors Alliance or its members have attracted more than three million engagements on Facebook and are present in at least 46 different languages on the platform. ISD found that large proportions—often the majority—of the most engaged with content on Facebook mentioning the World Doctors Alliance or its members in English, Spanish, German and Arabic contained false, misleading or conspiratorial claims related to COVID-19 and vaccines. Organisations that are part of Facebook’s fact-checking program have debunked false claims made by the World Doctors Alliance 189 times since the beginning of the pandemic. Despite this extensive fact-checking effort, Facebook is failing to take decisive action on the group or its members. Facebook’s fact-checking program incorporates organisations from 115 countries, but there appear to be major gaps in fact-checking in non-English languages. ISD found minimal application of fact-checking labels across the four languages analysed, with lower application rates on posts in German, Spanish and Arabic than in English. Content that does contain fact-checking labels is still accumulating tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of engagements." (Key findings) more

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Misconceptions, Misinformation and Politics of COVID-19 on Social Media: A Multi-Level Analysis in Ghana

Philip Teg-Nefaah Tabong, Martin Segtub

Frontiers in Communication, volume 6, issue 613794 (2021), 13 pp.

"The study showed a changing pattern in the misconceptions and misinformation about COVID-19. Initially myths were largely on causes and vulnerability. It was widely speculated that black people had some immunity against COVID-19. Also, the condition was perceived to cause severe disease among the e ... more

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Myths and Misconceptions on Covid-19: ‘Congo Check’ and ‘Talato’ Verification Experiences

Fabíola Ortiz dos Santos

Frontiers in Communication, volume 6, issue 627214 (2021), 21 pp.

"This paper asks: How do fact-checkers combat/halt Covid-19 myths and misconceptions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic? How do they engage in social media networks toward sense-giving and sharing corrective information? It discusses two cases of online media projec ... more

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Fake News, the Media & COVID-19 in West Africa

East Legon: Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) (2020), 11 pp.

"This report briefly examines the phenomenon of fake news in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in Anglophone West Africa. It specifically addresses the following areas: fake news trends; how the phenomenon has impacted the work of the media and the fight against the pandemic; measures taken so fa ... more

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Under the Surface: Covid-19 Vaccine Narratives, Misinformation and Data Deficits on Social Media

Rory Smith, Seb Cubbon, Claire Wardle

First Draft (2020), 95 pp.

"This research demonstrates the complexity of the vaccine information ecosystem, where a cacophony of voices and narratives have coalesced to create an environment of extreme uncertainty. Two topics are driving a large proportion of the current global vaccine discourse, especially around a Covid-19 ... more

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Defending freedom of expression: Fake news laws in East and Southeast Asia
Deep Insights

Bangkog; Manila: Asia Centre; Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats (CALD). (2020), 61 pp.

"This report compares the impact of legislation in countries with multiparty legislatures and independent government institutions, and countries with one dominant political force and an absence of independent national institutions. It finds that in the former countries, provisions are included to sa ... more

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Fact-Checking and Source Verification Manual in Times of COVID-19: Journalists and Media Organizations

Maryam Saeed, Seerat Khan, Muhammad Usman

Digital Rights Foundation (DRF) (2020), 50 pp.

"Without proper training in digital news verification, the dissemination of misinformation is both rapid and disastrous. Journalists are often processing a massive amount of information through social media with very little time to verify it--this presents unique challenges for journalists working w ... more

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Disinfodemic: Deciphering COVID-19 Disinformation
Key Guides

Julie Posetti, Kalina Bontcheva

Paris: UNESCO (2020), 16 pp.

"COVID-19 disinformation creates confusion about medical science with immediate impact on every person on the planet, and upon whole societies. It is more toxic and more deadly than disinformation about other subjects. That is why this policy brief coins the term disinfodemic. Using this frame, the ... more

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Understanding the Infodemic and Misinformation in the Fight Against COVID-19

Washington, DC: Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) (2020), 6 pp.

"Misinformation is false or inaccurate information deliberately intended to deceive. In the context of the current pandemic, it can greatly affect all aspects of life, especifically people’s mental health, since searching for COVID-19 updates on the Internet has jumped 50% –70% across all genera ... more

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Pillars of Russia's Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State (2020), 76 pp.

"Russia has operationalized the concept of perpetual adversarial competition in the information environment by encouraging the development of a disinformation and propaganda ecosystem that allows for varied and overlapping approaches that reinforce each other even when individual messages within the ... system appear contradictory. This ecosystem reflects both the sources of disinformation and propaganda—official government statements, state-funded media outlets, proxy websites, bots, false social media personas, cyber-enabled disinformation operations, etc.—and the different tactics that these channels use. Russia’s willingness to employ this approach provides it with three perceived advantages. First, it allows for the introduction of numerous variations of the same false narratives. This allows for the different pillars of the ecosystem to fine tune their disinformation narratives to suit different target audiences because there is no need for consistency, as there would be with attributed government communications. Second, it provides plausible deniability for Kremlin officials when proxy sites peddle blatant and dangerous disinformation, allowing them to deflect criticism while still introducing pernicious information. Third, it creates a media multiplier effect among the different pillars of the ecosystem that boost their reach and resonance. The media multiplier effect can, at times, create disinformation storms with potentially dangerous effects for those Russia perceives as adversaries at the international, national, and local level. In the past, Russia has leveraged this dynamic to shield itself from criticism for its involvement in malign activity. This approach also allows Russia to be opportunistic, such as with COVID-19, where it has used the global pandemic as a hook to push longstanding disinformation and propaganda narratives [...] This report provides a visual representation of the ecosystem described above, as well as an example of the media multiplier effect it enables. This serves to demonstrate how the different pillars of the ecosystem play distinct roles and feed off of and bolster each other. The report also includes brief profiles of select proxy sites and organizations that occupy an intermediate role between the pillars of the ecosystem with clear links to Russia and those that are meant to be fully deniable." (Pages 5-7) more

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Types, Sources, and Claims of COVID-19 Misinformation

J. Scott Brennen, Felix M. Simon, Philip N. Howard, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2020), 13 pp.

"In this RISJ factsheet we identify some of the main types, sources, and claims of COVID-19 misinformation seen so far. We analyse a sample of 225 pieces of misinformation rated false or misleading by factcheckers and published in English between January and the end of March 2020, drawn from a colle ... more

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Combatting COVID-19 disinformation on online platforms

Paris: OECD (2020), 7 pp.

"Disinformation and misinformation about COVID-19 is quickly and widely disseminated across the Internet, reaching and potentially influencing many people. This policy brief derives four key actions that governments and platforms can take to counter COVID-19 disinformation on platforms, namely: 1) s ... more

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Ética jornalística e pandemia: Entrevistas com especialistas

Florianópolis: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC); Observatório da Ética Jornalística (2020), 134 pp.

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Comunicación, sociedad y salud en contexto de pandemia
Deep Insights

Chasqui: Revista Latinoamericana de Comunicación (Quito), issue 145 (2020), pp. 41-300

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Fighting the Spread of False Information: A Fact-Checking and Verification Toolkit

Johannesburg: Africa Check; Fojo Media Institute (2020), 13 pp.

"This fact-checking and verification toolkit was developed by Africa Check for African journalists. It aims to equip journalists with the knowledge and practical tips to stop the spread of false information. This toolkit, which was developed as the world was in the midst of its battle against the Co ... more

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Countering Online Misinformation Resource Pack

Viviane Bianco et al.

UNICEF Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia (2020), 26 pp.

"The pack provides easy access to various types of resources (tools, reports, toolkits, journal articles, etc.) that can support the development of tactics and plans to counter misinformation. The pack also provides a summary of what the research indicates as potential solutions to tackle misinforma ... more

Defending freedom of expression: Fake news laws in East and Southeast Asia Deep Insights

Disinfodemic: Deciphering COVID-19 Disinformation Key Guides

Comunicación, sociedad y salud en contexto de pandemia Deep Insights

Defending freedom of expression: Fake news laws in East and Southeast Asia
Deep Insights

Disinfodemic: Deciphering COVID-19 Disinformation
Key Guides

Comunicación, sociedad y salud en contexto de pandemia
Deep Insights