New Delhi | Ramakant Chaudhary: Infodemic, abundance of information intertwined with distorted facts having far reaching impacts, has hit the world hard akin to the catastrophic Corona pandemic that has claimed 36.9 lakh lives so far. Corona has created a global health emergency while infodemic or fake news has caused a communication emergency that has proved a double whammy for human beings vis-à-vis dealing with the pandemic.
Misinformation is as contagious as Coronavirus; the former attacks the mental framework while the later punctures the respiratory system. In a sense, it causes clotting in the thinking process of people that puts up hurdles for the mission of making the world Corona free. The first wave of infodemic went around the origin of Corona while its second wave revolved around the Covid vaccination.
The aerosols of “rumour virus” around the vaccination drive, the only shield to safeguard human lives, are as lethal as mutant virus. Lots of disinformation emanating from social-media labs have developed vaccine hesitancy affecting people across the world from Wuhan to Washington and Pennsylvania (US) to Putai (Bihar).
The recent WhatsApp hoax carrying the statement of Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier saying all Covid vaccinated people could die within two years, has plagued people. Such sorts of myths have marred the vaccination campaign, especially India’s hinterland where rural folk have developed vaccine phobia posing a big challenge for the government’s gargantuan task of inoculating the humongous population of the country.
The mask – related infodemic is also rife. One fake news article claiming that mask itself carrying virus went viral. The brouhaha over lowering oxygen supply to body owing to covering face has created hiccups for the “Mask-Up India” programme. This apart, social media is flooded with recipe of boosting immunity, the facts of which are not scientifically established yet. Markets are swarmed with products and “Baba’s Nuskha” claiming to strengthen the defense mechanism of the body against Covid, though they purportedly shy away from the truth of medical science. Also, a sort of unwanted Allopathy versus Ayurveda hullaballoo has potential to make the rumour mill go overdrive.
Going hand in glove with pandemic, infodemic literally triggers alarm and awe that deserves urgent attention to evolve systematic approach to debunk and demolish fake news at its origin itself. All spectrums of media houses are having fact-checking tools on their radar to fend off viral myths and misinformation. They run stories and hold webinars / seminars to train people to give rebuttal to all such rubbish going viral on social media. However, rural people are not much aware of the significance of fact checking owing to illiteracy and inaccessibility.
Village areas are most vulnerable to fake news. Inadequately-informed influencers in backwaters of the country act like super-spreader of disinformation. Rumours and myths have even claimed human lives. Vaccine hesitancy in rural belts is giving a big headache to the policymakers and administrations.
This effort is appreciated but there is a catch here. Fact checkers train their guns at fake news only after the misinformation goes viral and damage is done already. There is a wide fissure between the origin of fake news and the actions of the fact-checking team. This gap must be bridged with a systematic plan to kill the infodemic in the nick of time, in a similar way as efforts put in to medically stop SARS-CoV-2 entering into the lungs from the nasal cavity.
Taking a cue from the handling pandemic, a holistic scientific approach should be evolved to cope with infodemic that is potent enough to unleash havoc in the most population dense countries like India. A system involving multi-pronged agencies is required for testing, tracing and treating fake news which has upended human lives.
As epidemiologists are working hard to checkmate pandemic, in the similar vein there must be a robust team of infodemiologists to mitigate misinformation preventively and precisely. A strong surveillance, better say infoveillance, is needed to spot the origin of fake news. In order to break the chain of infodemic, we must have tracing facilities embellished with skilled communication researchers who could trace and diagnose fake news before it snowballs into lethal viral news.
After the diagnosis with the help of infodemiologists and infoveillance, there should be a strong team of providing treatment that could give rebuttal to misinformation and myths by circulating facts with help of mainstream media and social media. The abstract of handling infodemic has here been illustrated by drawing analogy with Covid pandemic for underling the gravity of the situation struck with disinformation and distorted facts.
In an article published in the “New England Journal of Medicine”, communication researchers proposed to treat the Covid infodemic with the same scientific spirits used to halt epidemics. A coordinated and consolidated effort backed by government agencies could inoculate systems against the avalanche of fake news that could potentially drown society if it is not checked effectively and efficiently.
(Ramakant Chaudhary is a journalist and political commentator. The views expressed are personal.)
