Close
Panic buying. Toilet paper. Conspiracy theories. Recipes for COVID-19 immunity.
As the biological infection continues to spread at a rampant rate, we are also battling the rampant spread of misinformation. Social media has taken us on a COVID-19 roller-coaster ride. Much of it fuelled by misinformation. And no matter what your level of intelligence, profession, age or location, we are all vulnerable to fear.
The week started with images of crazed shoppers stockpiling mountains of toilet paper into their trolleys filling our social media feeds. These displays of panic buying started as posts shared with friends, then quickly went viral. The shortage was fuelled by panic, not supplies.
Conspiracy theories and pseudoscience are now filling our social media feeds. A conspiracy meme claiming that a disease outbreak had coincided with “every election year” as a way to influence politics, was shared millions of times. We’ve heard Italians were marching in the streets, angry at the Chinese for infecting the country. We’ve seen gels, creams and concoctions that can provide immunity to the Corona virus. None of it is true.
‘Alternative healing’ approaches being sold as the antidote to the medical conditions, are likely to be very dangerous. Nevertheless, in the absence of solid advice and cures, these go viral. They get shared, commented on and start to become a viable piece of information that we need to know about.
Facebook and other social media companies are frantically working to stop the spread of misinformation. Content that shared conspiracy theories were marked as false on Facebook, once they had been reviewed by fact checkers. However, just like COVID-19, the internet is a difficult beast to contain and tame. As we have witnessed, the sheer size and speed of information sharing makes it too easy for false content to fall through the cracks.
The danger of misinformation is that decisions are being made in homes, schools, and workplaces, amidst this backdrop of chaos. Consumers are rushing to build what are being labelled as ‘pandemic pantries’. This is having an almost immediate impact on supply chains for the most sought-after goods in a medical crisis. Hand sanitisers and medical face masks have already dried up in some markets, with no clear indication of when supplies will be replenished. We are unsure what information we have seen is real and accurate and what isn’t. We follow what might seem like dodgy ‘advice’ just in case it is true.
There is so much inaccurate information about the virus, the W.H.O. has said it was confronting an “Infodemic”. We are living in a digital world that is changing faster than we can keep up. We are witnessing right now how misinformation threatens our quality of life. It is whipping up a social hysteria, and escalating the problem far beyond anything that was noted during the SARS epidemic when digital connections were far less prevalent.
Knowing what is true and what isn’t has become an art of digital literacy. Standing back and not sharing extreme footage has become an art of self-control. Digital time requires a greater awareness of ourselves as humans and the impact that sharing online can have. We can’t opt-out of the digital world.
