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Since the coronavirus shutdowns began, social media has become more important than ever. Its a lifeline to our old lives a way to stay connected with loved ones, to hear the latest news, and sometimes to try to forget whats happening altogether.

But theres a downside to all this. Case in point: Plandemic, a documentary-style conspiracy video that recently went viral.

In case you missed it, Plandemic features discredited scientist Judy Mikovits making unsubstantiated, and often bizarre, claims about the ongoing pandemic including that COVID-19 was manipulated in a lab, that National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci had profited from some kind of cover-up, and that wearing masks is actually making people sicker.

Facebook and YouTube scrambled to take the video down, but over just a few days it managed to rack up millions of views and tens of thousands of shares.

As it turns out, Plandemic is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a problem thats spreading even faster than the coronavirus something U.N. Secretary-General Antnio Guterres recently called an infodemic.

This is a time for science and solidarity, Guterres said in a video message. Yet the global mis-infodemic is spreading. Harmful health advice and snake oil solutions are proliferating; falsehoods are filling the airways; wild conspiracy theories are infecting the internet. Hatred is going viral, stigmatizing and vilifying people and groups.

Youve probably heard a few of them for instance, that the coronavirus was created by Bill Gates, or is being spread by 5G radio waves, or can be cured by drinking bleach. In that sense, theres a very good chance that social media helped shape how the pandemic has unfolded, and not in a good way.

But the opposite is also true: The coronavirus has helped researchers learn a lot about how social media work as vectors for misinformation. And its even started to push real change for example, Twitters latest move to start fact-checking false claims about COVID-19 (including ones that come from the president.)

Heres what researchers have discovered so far.

Fake news is nothing new, but the recent tsunami of misinformation surrounding COVID-19 is arguably unprecedented in its scope and persistence. What is it about the coronavirus that seems to have tripped this giant worldwide game of Telephone?

According to Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington and co-founder of the Center for an Informed Public, its not as unusual as you might think.

Rumors are actually a typical part of a crisis event, Starbird said. Its natural human behavior.

Thats because humans crave information in the wake of crises, Starbird said information that could be crucial to their survival, such as which services have been affected, which roads are blocked, and where they can go for help.

And so under those conditions, what we as humans do is we try to resolve that uncertainty and that anxiety, she said.

The way we do it is by talking to one another.

We try to find that information and come up with explanations, Starbird said. And those explanations, we talk about it as collective sense-making.

Those explanations can be right, but they can also be wrong. When theyre wrong, the result is rumoring.

Historically, sense-making has happened on a local level but thanks to social media, our collective hunt for information about COVID-19 has turned into a worldwide conversation.

Its truly global, said Kathleen Carley, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who also runs the Center for Informed Democracy and Social Cybersecurity. So that means people around the globe are spreading disinformation and it will get picked up by people in other countries.

Usually, disaster-related rumors start dying away as more questions are answered. But that hasnt always been the case with the coronavirus, thanks to ongoing uncertainty about how it works, where it came from, how to treat it, and what governments are doing about it. As the rumor mill churns, these germs of misinformation have continued to spread, as fast if not faster than a real virus.

The problem is, we cant exactly social distance on social media.

Its hitting at this moment where our information systems are already sort of characterized by persistent, pervasive misinformation, disinformation, and the strategic manipulation of these online spaces, Starbird said.

And even though were all facing the same threat, were not all coming at it from the same perspective. There can be miscommunications from one language to another, and even intentional deception between groups that dont have each others best interests at heart.

From all parts of the world, people can be exploiting other people right now, Starbird said. So its just really this kind of perfect storm.

Go here to read the rest:
The cost and hidden silver lining of COVID-19 misinformation - WHYY