At times of crisis, especially new and inadequately understood threat, rumours, false news, conspiracy theories and misleading information are quickly born and easily spread among people. The COVID-19 pandemic presented a perfect opportunity for those wishing to create chaos, confusion and thus cause public harm. In mid-February, 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that the coronavirus pandemic is accompanied by an ‘infodemic of mis and disinformation’. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO Director-General declared that “We are not just fighting an epidemic; we are fighting an infodemic”. Infodemic or information epidemic implies the overload of information concerning a problem to the extent that the solution or management is made more difficult. Misleading healthcare information, false news, dangerous hoaxes, false claims, propaganda, conspiracy theories and rumours breed uncontrollable anxiety that endangers public health. Crises like the current COVID-19 pandemic presents a perfect opportunity for one to cause chaos, panic, confusion and public harm, consequently undermining efforts to curb the infectious disease and thus heightening the humanity challenge that the world is facing.
The social media and digital platforms’ ability to instantly communicate and share information has made it a platform of choice to ‘disinformers’ to generate and spread disinformation. Disinformation has now become the most significant plight to the public right to information and public health, second to COVID-19 pandemic. The Real411 platform launched by the South African government for fighting disinformation, found 47% of the complaints reported to be disinformation. While it remains essential for people to obtain COVID-19 related updates, it is critical for the public to be empowered with techniques to spot, identify and stop spreading of possible mis and disinformation. So then how can the public identify disinformation on social media platforms?
In order to address the ‘infodemic’ crisis surrounding the COVID-19 and other related pandemics, it is critical to differentiate disinformation from misinformation. While the terms have been commonly used interchangeably, these terms imply differently in the intent of action taken in generating and sharing information. Disinformation involves inaccurate, false and misleading information designed, shared and promoted intentionally for personal gains. Disinformation constitutes biased information that is deliberately presented and promoted to mislead public opinion. ‘Disinformers’ usually have deliberate cynical motives behind their actions other than informing the public. Therefore, health disinformation is defined as intentional designing, presentation and promotion of the information that counters best available evidence from medical experts at the time to cause public harm. Disinformation is often a fabricated story posted online with claims of editorial independence, which then diffuses and reappears in public discourses. Health disinformation may pertain to several health-related issues including the infection spreading mechanisms and statistics, vaccinations, treatment and management of health crisis. Given the variety of form in which health disinformation exists and the gruesome effects, it has in public health, South Africa and the world at large have taken deliberate measures to fight it.
Role of Social Media in the Face of Pandemic in South Africa
In the face of crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, a media that reaches the majority instantly is preferred for communicating health-related information. In an epidemic, delivering fast and reliable health information is critical to either decreasing transmission of a highly contagious infection or to provide the required healthcare management or treatment. Fast access to reliable health information is detrimental to managing COVID-19 pandemic. In this case, social media provided a practical platform for spreading public health messages to the public. This strategic positioning of social media is very much attributed to the vast number of active users of various social media platforms, popular ones including Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube. According to Statista, as of January 2020, South Africa had approximately 22 million active social media users. Thus, placing social media at a comparatively strategic positioned for communication health information compared to other news and information sharing media like print news, radios and televisions.
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, social media has become a significant conduit for news and information related to COVID-19. According to Borderless access, 39% of South Africans spend over three a day on social media. Moreover, the COVID-19 physical contact restrictions that have hampered physical media distribution have significantly boosted social media’s position in communicating pandemic related information. However, with the advent of an informed society or e-society, everyone has become an expert with a voice and a message to be heard about COVID-19. With the advancements in social media, a wide array of methods for designing, presenting and disseminating information are easily accessible to the public. Therefore, social media provides a simple, easy to use and an accessible platform for South Africans to connect, share and discuss their experiences, express their concerns and opinions regarding safety, illness, care and treatment. Consequently, these publishing capabilities, coupled with the ability to reach millions of audience instantly, have made social media prone to disinformation. As so, social media is rife with health disinformation.
Disinformation amid Pandemic in South Africa
By its nature, health disinformation consists of manipulated facts, figure or narratives to intentionally mislead the public either for financial or political gains. The truth is muddled in the information to influence public view to cause harm. Health disinformation can take different format or type, including false infection statistics, conspiracy theories, propaganda and fraudulent claims of cures and anti-vaccinations. Concerning the current COVID-19 pandemic, bogus claims of treatment such as the drinking bleach or eating garlic have swamped social media. Similarly, several conspiracy theories concerning the origin of the coronavirus including the virus being a mass destruction weapon, a strategy to reduce world population and the spreading being connected to 5G installations have been circulated in public via social media. Other disinformation forms that have circulated and affected the South Africa community include images and news showing shops running out of stock of groceries that created the hype to stock up, particularly toilet paper rolls and other essential household goods.
Disinformation campaigns deliberately fabricate and spread falsehood or fake content for political gains, consumer fraudulent, propaganda and smear campaigns. While past epidemics highlight the importance of fighting social media disinformation on infectious disease, there is particular importance and urgency with the COVID-19 pandemic. The severity of disinformation includes interference with or infringement of the public’s right to informed decisions on healthcare and safety matters related to the pandemic. Concerning COVID-19, this infringement of the right to access valid and authentic information has resulted in mismanagement of the virus. For example, the dire myth of curing COVID-19 by drinking disinfectants or bleaching agents which have been shown to cause blood clots and acute kidney injury. Moreover, disinformation affects the public’s right to effectively participate in the management of the pandemic as this shrouds credible sources and thus delays access to the much-needed pandemic management information.
The Trend of COVID-19 Disinformation in South Africa
In an attempt to combat disinformation, the Real411 platform was launched, and it became operational on 22nd March 2020. As of 7th June 2020 the platform had received a total of 451 complaints of which 429 were analysed and resolved. The platform confirmed 47% of the complaints as disinformation indicating how prevalent the situation of content and circulation of messages harmful to the public is on digital platforms. Looking at the weekly disinformation trend from 8th to 14th June, 2020, out of 32 complaints reports, which majority (56%) originated from Twitter, only six (6) were confirmed as disinformation primarily driven by the protest on #BlackLivesMatter. Also, as expected during this time, COVID-19 related disinformation, including the claim that South Africa is returning to lockdown level 5 and the self-combusting sanitisers circulated various social media outlets in South Africa. As South Africa is looking into revising its lockdown levels and regulations, it is clear that COVID-19 threat of disinformation remains an ongoing concern. Consequently, such efforts are needed in creating public awareness and educating the public on how to identify and stop disinformation from spreading.
How to spot disinformation on social media in the face of a pandemic
Since disinformation is a fabrication of information intending to cause public harm through panic, anxiety and distrust, it is critical to arm the public with techniques of identifying it and then stop its spreading. The following are steps that citizens can follow in identifying disinformation on their social media platforms.
Scrutinise the content: Disinformation very often is designed to trigger an emotional reaction from its audience. Emotional triggers such as outrage, anger, anxiety, sympathy or panic are a common feature of disinformation. This is the first signal that should prompt the recipient to be weary and thus to take further measures to examine that piece of information.
Follow the origin or primary source of information: Disinformation has been established to assume the appearance of editorial independence. Although not all independently edited news and information constitutes disinformation, the public is cautioned to be wary of this. Therefore, the public is encouraged to trace and identify the primary source of information to assess the credibility of the source, its editorial policies and ideological agendas.
Determine the trustworthiness of the source: Once the primary source of information is identified; one needs to examine the credibility of the source; this may include examining the profile to determine sources’ authority in the area of the communicated information. For instance, for official information regarding COVID-19 pandemic at the international level, it was the WHO while at national levels the ministries of health were responsible in communicating updates and other safety and healthcare-related information to the public. Moreover, each nation has hierarchies and directives for communicating pandemic related information, which are usually made public to guide information access. The public is encouraged to be aware of such structures and consult such source to verify any pandemic related information.
Determine if the information was relayed accurately: Once the source has been vetted, then one needs to compare the information received and the one on from the source to determine if the information was relayed accurately. Therefore, just because one claims to access information from a credible and reliable source, it does not mean that they have conveyed the information accurately. In most cases, disinformation is designed to emulate the truth as close as possible. This may include; finding the date or the timestamp of the original feed, finding surveys and infographic sources and making consideration for time-sensitivity of the information.
Weighing the evidence/information: This step entails fact finding or fact checking with other sources to further verify and validate the claims on the piece of information. At this juncture, one needs to ask him/herself what is the bigger narrative? What is the consequence of the information? Are important facts left out or distorted on the feed? Why share the information? The public is also encouraged to consult available resources for combating disinformation such as the Real411 platform and similar such platforms to verify the source and the information further.
Communicate only verified information: Only when you are satisfied with the validity and accuracy of the information, then you can share the information. As a presenter of information on behalf of an organisation or yourself for public consumption know you bear the responsibility of verifying and validating that information by citing and fact-checking your sources. Designing, presenting and spreading of disinformation through any medium, including social media is legally prohibited in South Africa under the Disaster Management Act Regulation gazetted by the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs. Therefore, the public needs to be cognizant of the law and avoid spreading any unverified information, otherwise they expose themselves to possible litigation should the information shared be proven to be misleading. They will be held accountable for it.
In conclusion, empowering the public to spot, identify and stop spreading disinformation is a crucial stage towards combating disinformation. While solving the disinformation challenge, especially during a pandemic is neither simple nor straightforward. Equipping the public with some necessary information searching and verification techniques will help ease the problem. Creating awareness and educating the people on the presence of, the effects of disinformation as well as the consequences of ‘disinforming’ people, will sensitise the public to be responsible in handling and sharing of pandemic related information. It is essential to create an environment whereby critical thinking is applied not only to doubt, debunk or poke holes on information but also to rather understand the information better in its entirety and accuracy.
Maria Lauda Goyayi is a researcher at the School of Management, IT and Public Governance, UKZN. She writes in her personal capacity.