Infodemic amid a pandemic: Social media as a friend or foe?

Whether we like or not, social media has encroached our lives in multiple ways. There are constructive as well as destructive elements associated with a mixed bag of results. Are we experiencing an infodemic amid a pandemic? Today’s column reflects the association of social media as a communicator of health-related information, in global and local contexts. 

 

Overview

What is an infodemic? The WHO describes it as follows: An infodemic is too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak. It causes confusion and risk-taking behaviours that can harm health. It also leads to mistrust in health authorities and undermines the public health response. An infodemic can intensify or lengthen outbreaks when people are unsure about what they need to do to protect their health and the health of people around them. With growing digitisation – an expansion of social media and internet use – information can spread more rapidly. This can help to fill information voids more quickly but can also amplify harmful messages. 

There is an interesting study investigating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Facebook Page to examine what kind of information is shared to public using Facebook and how Facebook users share and engage with information during a health crisis with a case of the COVID-19 pandemic. The author, Sue Yeon Syn of the Department of Library and Information Science, The Catholic University of America. Her findings show that the type of posts have significant association with the COVID-19 situation and the level of users’ engagement and reactions differs significantly when COVID-19 related information is shared.

A paper by Heena Sahni and Hunny Sharma, two medical researchers from India, highlights both the constructive and destructive roles currently played by social media.  As they observe, with over 560 million internet users, India became the world’s second-largest online market globally, ranking next to China. Of all the social media available in India, the most popular social networking sites are YouTube and Facebook. Indeed, India has the largest Facebook user base in the world. WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger are recently a few of the other famous social networking sites used in India. People use mobile phones too much nowadays that it may cause medical implications. 

A study reported by The Lancet described “WhatsAppitis” in which a young woman had wrist pain because of sending too many messages from her phone. This is interesting in a time where almost every person is having internet in their cell phones and laptop and everyone can send text messages and information, nowadays instead of “alert,” “panic”, that transmits faster when compared to COVID-19 itself.

There have been many collaborative projects such as the one between the World Health Organization (WHO), Wunderman Thompson, the University of Melbourne and Pollfish. With data collected from late October 2020 to early January 2021, the outcomes provide key insights on where Gen Z and Millennials seek COVID-19 information, who they trust as credible sources, their awareness, and actions around false news, and what their concerns are. 

Social media and health information 

Social media has become an important health communication tool, observes Sue Yeon Syn in her paper titled, “Health information communication during a pandemic crisis: Analysis of CDC Facebook Page during COVID-19”. Not only the users of social media but also medical professionals recognise that social media is a good media to disseminate health information and promote healthcare. In addition to general health communication, social media is considered to provide a new platform for online word-of-mouth communication during unique situations such as an emergency and crisis. 

As Sue Yeon Syn further highlights, web users consider social media as an alternate channel to request help in emergency and as one of the most popular sources of emergency information during a disaster. For emergency responders, social media is beneficial compared to previous efforts in developing crisis management systems as it has already established active user population and can eliminate the costly development of crisis management systems. Advantages of using social media during emergency and crisis situations include being free, direct communication among users, communication between organisation and users, and effective information dissemination. 

It is interesting to note that about 71% of the world’s internet users are youth aged 15–24. As Heena Sahni and Hunny Sharma observe, in India, there were 197 million active social media users (14% of the total population), by early 2020. According to the 2014 Digital Health Literacy Survey among European Citizens, 59% of Europeans used the internet to check for health information. 55% requested general information, 54% requested information about a particular illness, 23% sought detailed information on a diagnosis, and 10% used the net to get a second opinion after consulting their physician. Approximately 82% and 87% of people looking for health-related information used search engines for their queries. 

Heena Sahni and Hunny Sharma cite a second source of information (47%–48% people) was relevant and dedicated websites such as health blogs and forums, while between 33% and 38% were looking for information from official health websites, such as the Ministry of Health or the WHO. Another study performed by Public Health Dentists of Bengaluru India in 2014 revealed that out of 572 study participants, 150 (26.2%) reported the use of the Internet for oral health-related information, overall, more than 80% of the respondents preferred the use of Google as their search engine but when asked about any research article and journal website they could not picture anything.

At this time, when there are no other ways available to cure or manage COVID-19 other than quarantine and social distancing, social media has become a strong platform for spreading public health awareness and advocacy regarding public health issues. Some nations do have Twitter and Facebook accounts for these purposes. An active page on Twitter and Facebook as these platforms allows users to post large numbers of short messages in less period (known as Microblogs) also these organisations use to monitor “tweets” that may signify any outbreak and share information on events of this nature.

Social networking sites also serve as a way for disaster management, outbreak prevention, and emergency response staff to easily communicate and access critical information collected by organisations like the WHO and the Center for Disease Control. A study showed that during the Ebola (2014) and Zika (2015) outbreak, social networks helped to establish active communications with the community and then applied it to improve in public health. Another evidence indicates that in 2016, when the WHO declared Zika virus as a danger to the world, social media monitoring and prevention awareness messages played as a lifesaving role in enhancing risk control and disease management.

Social media and crisis communication 

As Sue Yeon Syn observes, there are several key roles of social media, particularly in the perspectives of social media as a communication channel during crisis. There can be seven ways in which social media can be used in crisis response: a listening function, monitoring a situation, integration of social media into emergency planning and crisis management, crowd-sourcing and collaborative development, creating social cohesion and promoting therapeutic initiatives, the future of causes, and research. She cites previous research where the social-mediated crisis communication model investigated users’ behaviour of social media use for crisis communication and reported that in comparison to the traditional media, users desire to obtain insider information from social media and the source of crisis information affect users’ information behaviours. 

It was found that Facebook users consider Facebook as a communication channel that is real-time and timely for such emergency although the information may be inaccurate. It was also found that, in this regard, the government groups providing accurate information in a timely manner through social media becomes critical during crisis. 

As Sue Yeon Syn comments, so far, a little has been examined for the use of social media in case of national or organisational health emergency such as an epidemic or pandemic crisis. Health crisis is unique in that the boundary of time and people who are impacted is not easy to identify and people who are not currently impacted may be influenced in some time later. Health crisis is complicated as it is involved with everyday life of human and community in terms of food, environment, business, health system, mental health, etc. This leads to different types of information needs and behaviours from other crisis situations.

According to WHO sources, although young people are less at risk of severe disease from COVID-19, they are a key group in the context of this pandemic and share in the collective responsibility to help us stop transmission. They are also the most active online, interacting with an average number of five digital platforms (such as, Twitter, TikTok, WeChat and Instagram) daily. As the above-mentioned collaborative project of WHO observed, to better understand how young adults are engaging with technology during this global communication crisis, an international study was conducted, covering approximately 23,500 respondents, aged 18-40 years, in 24 countries across five continents. 

As the above report further stated, when asked what COVID-19 information (if any) they would likely post on social media, 43.9% of respondents, both male and female, reported they would likely share “scientific” content on their social media. This finding appears to buck the general trend on social media where funny, entertaining, and emotional content spread fastest. More than half (59.1%) of Gen Z and Millennials surveyed are “very aware” of “fake news” surrounding COVID-19 and can often spot it. However, the challenge is in recruiting them to actively counter it, rather than letting it slide, with many (35.1%) just ignoring.

According to the said survey findings, Centennials (Generation Z) and Millennials (Generation Y) have multiple worries beyond getting sick. While it is often suggested that young adults are ‘too relaxed’ and do not care about the crisis, this notion is not reflected in the data, with over 90% of respondents were very concerned or somewhat concerned about the risk of infection. Beyond getting sick themselves, the top concern of respondents (55.5%) was the risk of friends and family members contracting COVID-19, closely followed by the economy crashing (53.8%). The report highlights the need to navigate their digital world safely and make choices to not only protect their health but also the health of their families and communities. These insights can help health organisations, governments, media, businesses, educational institutions, and others sharpen their health communication strategies. Ensuring policy and recommendations are relevant to young people in a climate of misinformation, scepticism, and fear.

Way forward 

We have to continue with a contagion that takes us through confusing contours. At the same time, we have seen the media reports of the good, bad and the ugly use of Facebook in Sri Lanka. Some spend more time connected with Facebook friends without even showing their face to the loved ones near and dear. With the presence of more than 10 million Sri Lankan users of internet, the increasing trend of using social media for multiple purposes is obvious. The necessity to work from home in the recent past has further intensified it. 

There may be policy issues and procedure inadequacies. Yet, the fact remains that the emerging workforce is more tech-savvy and internet-friendly. Rising popularity of the internet usage for socially critical events such as releasing of exam results, utility payment gateways is a promising sign. Much could be done with both creativity and control to ensure reaping the richness of the social age in avoiding the adversities of an infodemic.

 (The writer is the immediate past Director of Postgraduate Institute of Management and can be reached through [email protected], [email protected] or www.ajanthadharmasiri.info.)