this is part of us Coronavirus latest information In this series, Harvard experts in epidemiology, infectious diseases, economics, politics, and other fields provide insight into what the latest developments in the coronavirus outbreak may lead to. Masu.
As disease outbreaks gain public attention, half-baked advice, sketchy treatments, and false theories abound, as anxious people scramble to understand new health risks and formal statements from medical professionals. recommendations are often drowned out.
The current crisis is no exception. The sudden onset of the highly contagious coronavirus has sparked what United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres last week called a “pandemic of misinformation,” with nearly two-thirds of Americans of respondents said they had seen the news and information, so this does not mean they are being overlooked. According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, the disease appeared to be a complete hoax.
But social media is what characterizes the proliferation of bad information surrounding the current crisis. Kasisomayajula “Vish” Viswanath, Lee Kum Kee Professor of Medical Communication at Harvard University’s T.H. This means that they are not just consuming. It is spreading and even creating them, a dynamic that is “very different” from what happened during previous pandemics MERS and H1N1.
He said the sheer amount of misinformation and disinformation online about the coronavirus has “obscured” accurate public health guidance and “makes our job a little bit harder.” said.
“Misinformation may be an honest mistake or may not be blatantly intended to mislead people,” such as advising others to eat garlic or gargle with salt water to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. There is also a gender,” he said. Disinformation campaigns are typically propagated by state officials, Party members, or activists for political gain, intentionally spreading falsehoods or even saying that the Chinese government has executed Wuhan residents for COVID-19. They also create fake content such as videos and the movie “Plandemic” that claim to be real. It claims the pandemic is a ploy to force mass vaccination, which most major social media platforms have recently banned.
To be effective, especially during a crisis, public health communicators must be seen as trustworthy, transparent, and trustworthy. And there, Vishwanath said, the authorities are not doing enough.
“People are hungry for information and certainty, but when there is a lack of consensus-driven information and everything is being discussed in public, it creates confusion among people,” he said.
“When the president says disinfectants and anti-malarial drugs are one way to treat COVID-19 and others say, ‘No, that’s not the case,’ the people say, ‘If the authorities can’t do it, It’s hard to start wondering, ‘What if?’ I agree, but I can’t decide, so why should I trust anyone?”
Analysts say mainstream media coverage is making the problem worse. At many major news organizations, reporters and editors with no medical or public health training have been redeployed to cover the ongoing pandemic, understanding complex scientific terminology, methodologies, and research, and veterinarians. Not only that, but they are also desperately trying to identify it. List of trusted sources. Because many people don’t yet know enough about science to report critically and authoritatively, they can lean too much into traditional journalistic values such as balance, novelty, and conflict. In doing so, you unnecessarily muddy the waters by elevating outliers and inaccurate counterarguments and hypotheses.
“It’s a huge challenge,” said KT Lee, professor of global health, during an April 24 lecture on COVID-19 misinformation hosted by the Shorenstein Center for Technology and Social Change Research Project. said Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. media, politics and public policy.
“People are hungry for information and certainty, but when there is a lack of consensus-driven information and everything is being debated in public, it creates confusion.”
Kasisomayajula Viswanath
“What I’ve found is that among those who understand the science of this disease, there’s a surprising degree of agreement on the fundamental issues, but disagreement on the trade-offs and policies that follow. “That’s true,” said Jha, a frequent commentator on news programs. “The idea of taking two sides of science in an area where there is actually no disagreement feels very strange and comes to mind over and over again.”
Then there’s the issue of political bias. This is especially true for right-wing media outlets, which largely repeat the reporting angles and perspectives promoted by the White House and the president about the progress of the pandemic and the effectiveness of the administration’s response, and which seek to promote unproven treatments for COVID-19. Exaggerating and exaggerating. the availability of testing and safety equipment and the prospect of rapid vaccine development;
Tara Setmeyer, spring 2020 resident fellow at the Institute of Politics and former Republican communications director, said what’s coming out of Fox News and other pro-Trump media outlets goes far beyond misinformation. Downplaying government experts’ views on the deadly nature of the coronavirus, blaming China or philanthropist Bill Gates for the spread of the virus, or supporting shutdown protests funded by Republican political groups. Everything she does is part of an “aggressive disinformation campaign” aimed at biasing information, she said. The president’s responsibility to advance his re-election campaign.
But dissuading people from believing misinformation is not as easy as shoving facts into their epistemological bubbles, says Christopher Robichaud, senior lecturer in ethics and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). says Mr. He teaches a general education course called “Ignorance, Lies, and Hogwash” and Humbug: The Value of Truth and Knowledge in a Democracy. ”
Over time, bubble dwellers not only feed misinformation to their viewers, but also “pre-empt” any counterarguments their viewers might encounter from outsiders, much like cult leaders do. ” can be trapped in a media echo chamber expecting criticism.
“It’s not enough just to introduce new evidence. You have to break out their strategies to reduce that disproof, and that’s much harder than just exposing people to different points of view,” he said. Stated.
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have recently stepped up efforts to remove misinformation about the coronavirus following a public outcry, but the social media platforms are “not doing enough” to slow the flow. said Joan Donovan, head of technology and social change. Project at HKS.
Since the nationwide shift to remote work, many social media companies have relied heavily on artificial intelligence to patrol misinformation on their platforms, rather than human moderators, which tend to be more effective. Donovan said. When so many users suddenly search or post about a particular topic, it can “signal search algorithms that typically cannot tell the difference between truth and lies.”
The public needs to scrutinize more carefully and be “more skeptical” about what they read and hear, especially online, rather than trying to keep up with the latest COVID-19 research.
Kasisomayajula Viswanath
These companies are reluctant to provoke a regulatory backlash by cracking down on their platforms and angering one or both political parties.
“So while they are taking careful action against content that is immediately deemed harmful (such as posts about drinking chemicals), they are moderating calls for people to break curfews. are reluctant,” Donovan said.
Viswanath said public health officials cannot and should not debunk misinformation and conspiracy theories in every detail, lest they be discredited by drawing attention. Stated. The public needs to scrutinize more carefully and become “more skeptical” of what they read and hear, especially online, and not try to keep up with the latest COVID-19 research. “You don’t need to know everything,” he said.
But placing all the blame on the people is “unfair and won’t work,” Biswanath said. Institutions like social media platforms have to take more responsibility for what’s out there.
Public health agencies conduct effective communication monitoring of social media to determine which rumors, ideas, and issues are most worrying the public, what is understood and misunderstood about various diseases and treatments, and how communities It is necessary to monitor what kind of superstitions are being spread and actively promoted. And they need to develop strategies to counter what they’re picking up. “We can’t control this, but we can at least partially manage it,” Viswanath said.
Robichaux says some of the misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 are outlandish or dangerously inaccurate, but it’s a mistake to dismiss those who believe them as people who don’t care about the truth. he said.
Many cognitive biases get in the way of even the best truth-seeking strategies, so perhaps we could all benefit from a little more intellectual humility in times of great uncertainty such as these. may be possible, he said.
“Most of us are, at best, experts in a very small area. But we don’t live the world as if that were true. “You navigate the world as if you’re an expert on a lot of things you’re not,” he said. “A little intellectual humility goes a long way. And I say this as a professor: It applies to us, and it applies to society in general.”
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