New WHO publication, read about AIRAs work, call for papers, upcoming events and more.
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Infodemic Management News Flash
Friday 6 August 2021 | Issue #19
Feature Artwork
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, global partners have been working together to co-create infodemic solutions. Good infodemic management goes beyond communication and embraces a multidisciplinary approach including media, law, behavioural science, epidemiology and many others. We have reported on many new partnership approaches through these News Flashes, and it is heartening to see multidisciplinary global collaborations formed and sustained.
This video from the 1st WHO Global Infodemic Manager training highlights the range of voices involved in infodemic management work globally. It's also a nice reminder to watch for an upcoming announcement about the 3rd Global Infodemic Manager training later this year 😉.
Read on👇 as this issue of the News Flash contains opportunities for sharing solutions through a number of calls for papers, and new opportunities to connect with and learn from colleagues at upcoming events.
Image credit: Sam Bradd
Feature Content
New WHO Publication: Infodemic Signal Detection During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Hot off the presses: A new paper on the development of a social listening public health taxonomy for COVID-19. What's a social listening taxonomy? Think of it like a tree. The trunk is the general topic of interest, the branches are more specific categories relevant to that topic, and the twigs off of those branches are the sub-categories that have an even narrower focus. Why use it? To better navigate through information overload during an infodemic!
Filtering billions of publicly shared messages through this kind of taxonomy makes narrative analysis more efficient, separating the signals from the noise, so experts can better hear and respond to changing community concerns. This approach in turn gives decision-makers more relevant information more quickly to support a rapid response because time is of the essence during a health emergency.
Published in JMIR Infodemiology, this paper describes how the method was developed and applied to identify relevant points of confusion, harmful narratives, and key questions from public online conversations about COVID-19, and how the approach can be easily adapted to other health topics. Rather than only reacting to viralised rumours, this approach helps experts more quickly spot information voids so they can be addressed more proactively before those vacuums get filled with rumours.
This taxonomy has been used to inform the weekly EPI-WIN global analysis reports since March 2020, including more than 1.4 billion public posts about COVID-19 and 70 million questions. The taxonomy has also been has been adapted, translated, and applied in a number of country-level studies in Mali, the Philippines, and Malaysia, as well as sub-nationally in Canada. The WHO EARS platform builds on this taxonomy to move from a weekly analysis to daily automated classification of publicly shared questions and concerns for 25 pilot countries.
Countering Misinformation in Africa
Managing the infodemic is a challenge at every scale. The African Infodemic Response Alliance (AIRA) was launched in December last year to strengthen regional coordination for countering misinformation and addressing information voids. The coalition of 14 organizations and counting is building capacity for the COVID-19 infodemic response and response capacity for other health emergencies across Africa.
The WHO-supported AIRA team is coordinating infodemic management efforts, including social listening training, and has helped to establish infodemic management teams for 20 countries in the African region. AIRA's social listening tools work to identify rumours and information voids as early as possible, and the team then sets to work countering misinformation and amplifying credible health information. Viral Facts Africa (VFA), launched in March this year, is creating science-based health information, fact-checks, prebunks, and debunks, and is being use to boost misinformation literacy, all in a highly visual format. VFA content has been circulated in 34 African countries, generating over 100 million views so far.
Read more about it from WHO's Sergio Cecchini and Tim Nguyen.
Photo Credit: REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde
Opportunities for Action
World Evidence-Based Healthcare Day
The World Evidence-Based Healthcare Day explores the role evidence plays in an infodemic and focusses on how we can promote access to evidence-informed health information. The day will be recognised on 20th October 2021, and there is a call for the global evidence community to share their experiences on:
- Facilitating assurance knowledge translation during an infodemic
- Knowledge refinement, filtering and fact checking
- Building eHealth literacy and science literacy capacity
- Monitoring, infodemiology, infoveillance and social listening.
Colleagues can contribute by writing a blog, hosting an event or becoming an evidence ambassador.
Call for Papers | Social Media, Ethics, and COVID-19 Misinformation
The Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) is inviting submissions for a special theme issue examining the intersection of social media, ethics, and COVID-19 misinformation. Participants are encouraged to submit papers relevant to the upcoming 'INFODEMIC: A Stanford Conference on Social Media and COVID-19 Misinformation'. There are a list of priority areas for research papers, all with a strong infodemiology focus.
Call for Papers: Special Issue on Information Hygiene and the Fight against the Misinformation Infodemic
An upcoming special issue in IT professional is calling for papers on information hygiene and the fight against the misinformation to help manage the infodemic. They are calling for papers that discuss recent advances, perspectives, and use cases across a range of areas such as online misinformation diffusion models, detection of deepfakes and social media literacy, among others.
Call for Papers: Special Issue on Mis- and Disinformation about COVID-19: Challenges for Health Communication
The European Journal of Health Communication is calling for papers for an upcoming special issue on ‘Mis- and Disinformation about COVID-19: Challenges for Health Communication’. The special issue calls for papers under the following topic areas:
- Presentation and Dissemination of Mis- and Disinformation about COVID-19
- Effects of Mis- and Disinformation about COVID-19
- Debunking and Prebunking of Mis- and Disinformation about COVID-19
Job Opportunities
- Rockefeller Foundation: Lead, Science Communication, Pandemic Prevention Institute (Remote / Washington DC)
- CDC Foundation: Vaccine Demand Strategist (Remote)
- Sabin Vaccine Institute: Director, Global Communities of Practice (Washington DC / remote)
- UNICEF: Social and Behaviour Change Data Analyst Specialist (Nairobi, Kenya)
- WHO: Dark Social Research in the Western Pacific Region (Remote)
- UNICEF: Digital Campaign Consultant (Remote)
- AFENET: Senior Behavioral Scientist (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)
- WHO: Technical Officer, Risk Communications (Philippines, Manila)
Upcoming Events
Symposium on Health and Medical Misinformation | August 12th 2021
The American Public Health Association is hosting a symposium on health and medical misinformation. The symposium features speakers presenting on a range of topics about misinformation, ethics, future research areas, and case studies in countering misinformation.
Digital Download | ACCANect 2021 | September 8 2021
The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) is hosting their national conference. ACCANect 2021: #DigitalDownload, will feature a range of presentations about key topics including cyber security advice for small businesses, how Australians’ changing communications habits are driving change in the telecommunications sector, and what the digital platforms are doing to tackle misinformation.
13th Central and Eastern European Communication and Media Conference | October 22 & 23 2021
The theme of the 13th Central and Eastern European Communication and Media Conferences the ‘new communication revolution’. The conference will be held in Kraków, Poland, and online in October 2021. The preliminary program is out now, and includes topics of interest to infodemic managers such as pandemic conspiracy narratives and collaborative knowledge exchange.
Recent Events
The 9th International Festival of Public Health
The 9th International Festival of Public Health was held online on the 19th - 23rd July. Topics presented had a broad public health focus from a range of international perspectives. WHO Technical Officer for Infodemic Management, Lynette Phuong, presented on 'COVID-19 Infodemic Management: A Brief Overview’. You can watch her presentation here, at 1:31 mins.
Trusted voices – Who, Why and How to Communicate about COVID-19 Vaccines
The recording for the third webinar co-convened by the WHO, UNICEF and Religions for Peace is now available. The webinar, ‘Trusted voices – who, why and how to communicate about COVID-19 vaccines’, discussed the importance of using trusted voices to deliver information during crises.
Access the recording and the presentation here.
RSPH Sparks Debates: COVID-19 Vaccine, Mis & Disinformation
The recording from the recent Royal Society of Public Health Webinar on the issue of misinformation and disinformation with regards to the COVID-19 vaccine is now available online.
31st European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases
The 31st European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases, took place online from 9-12 July 2021 and brought together experts from relevant fields to present the latest findings and developments. Tim Nguyen, Unit Head of High Impact Events Preparedness at WHO, presented in the ‘Ethics and Conspiracy Regarding Vaccines’ stream on the 10th July. You can hear his presentation entitled ‘WHO strategy concerning the COVID-19 Infodemic’.
Going Viral: How Covid Misinformation Spreads Online
Scientists Speak up at Stanford, is a student organization focused on stopping the propagation of false, dangerous opinions by engaging in effective conversation. They organize community discussions and workshops, and recently hosted a discussion about how COVID-19 misinformation spreads online.
Watch the recording here
What We're Reading
Fun With Numbers
When we think of an infodemic, we often think of conspiracy theories or misinformation. But the overabundance of information can be just as challenging for everyone to navigate. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic there have been a lot of literature published. A lot.
In 2020, about 4% of research output was COVID-19 related, equating to over 200,000 papers. The Cochrane COVID-19 Study register currently lists 72,846 studies, while the WHO COVID-19 Global literature on coronavirus disease database references 318,173 papers.
A recent study examined the number of news articles referencing the infodemic. While searching in the 10 years from 2010–2020, the authors found 61 news stories. The same search for just 1 year, 2020–2021, resulted in 14,301 published news articles.
Keeping on top of emerging evidence and news is important, and clearly a big job! That's why we need to keep growing our global community of infodemic managers.
About the News Flash
An infodemic is an overabundance of information—some accurate, some not—that spreads alongside a disease outbreak. Infodemics are nothing new, but in the digital age, they spread in real time and create a breeding ground for uncertainty. Uncertainty fuels skepticism and distrust, which is perfect environment for fear, anxiety, finger-pointing, stigma, violent aggression and dismissal of proven public health measures. To manage an infodemic, we need to understand what contributes to it. So that’s why we’re sending you these updates. In each issue of the WHO’s Infodemic Management News Flash we’ll share the latest work happening at the global level, as well as highlight some of the challenges and solutions with infodemics in local contexts. We’ll also provide you with a few takeaways to help you be an effective infodemic manager in your daily life.
If you have a tip on infodemic management or an idea for a future News Flash, email us at infodemicmanagement@who.int. Thanks for joining us on this journey.
