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The scale of disinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic has been called infodemic. It involved disseminating various messages and theories that had a significant negative impact on limiting the spread of the disease but also exacerbated existing social antagonisms and emboldened and radicalised fringe groups. Infodemic, to a large extent manifested in social media, also fostered the formalisation of denialist circles, who transferred their sometimes very aggressive sentiments from the web to the real world. Negation and contestation of the pandemic were partly born spontaneously but were also created as part of postmodern hybrid activities. Consequently, narratives of infodemic led to difficulties in functioning health services, but above all, to an increase in morbidity and mortality related to COVID-19. The consequences of the infodemic would also include various economic effects, such as increased medical expenses for unvaccinated people or turbulence in the labour market.

The management of the health crisis we are facing far exceeds the management of the coronavirus outbreak. Containment measures taken in response to the epidemic have very wide medical and societal impacts. In parallel with the epidemic, there is also an 'infodemic', a huge and continuous flow of true and false information that is difficult to manage for individuals. Doctors, and university doctors in particular, find themselves in a media space of which they are not customary. As part of an academic effort to draw the attention of the government and experts to the importance of social sciences and humanities in emerging from the crisis, a neurologist joined media sociology specialists and a psychologist expert on anxiety disorders to better understand the impact of sources of (mis-) information on the behaviour of the population, with a particular focus on the differences between the general public and health professionals. ; La gestion de la crise sanitaire à laquelle nous sommes confrontés dépasse largement la gestion de l'épidémie de coronavirus. Les mesures de confinement prises en réponse à l'épidémie ont des impacts médicaux et sociétaux très larges. Parallèlement à l'épidémie évolue également une « infodémie », un flux énorme et incessant d'informations, vraies et fausses, difficiles à gérer pour les individus. Les médecins, et les médecins universitaires en particulier, se retrouvent dans un espace médiatique dont ils sont peu coutumiers. Dans le cadre d'un effort académique pour attirer l'attention du gouvernement et des experts sur l'importance des sciences sociales et humaines pour sortir de la crise, un neurologue s'est associé à des spécialistes de la sociologie des médias et à un psychologue expert des troubles anxieux pour mieux comprendre l'impact des sources de (més-) informations sur le comportement de la population, avec un accent particulier sur les différences existant entre le grand public et les professionnels de la santé.

During the COVID-19 pandemic situation, when information outbreak is enormous, it is the time to remind the society of the importance of libraries and librarians in organising and disseminating accurate & reliable information. Accurate information is the key to handling a chaotic situation. The exchange of false information seems to be on the rise. It has created a situation of 'infodemic' as stated by the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO). This has not only affected research work severely but has also created chaos among the laypeople. The present study tries to investigate the attitude, perception & responsibility of a library professional for this purpose as they are the essential provider of information for academic as well as a social community. The study was carried through a short online survey with a structured questionnaire designed on a Google form. A total of 150 respondents (N) was selected for the study over four designated domains viz. Library Assistant, Assistant Librarian, Deputy Librarian and University Librarian. The findings of the study reveal that some part of regular citizen, political leaders, attention seekers & profiteers, and heavily partisan news media are the top responsible sources of infodemic; while WhatsApp & Facebook takes the lead as a major platform for this purpose. Additionally, the study throws light on harms done to people due to this infodemic e.g. anxiety, insomnia, depression and negative thoughts. As an essential practice to fight against such infodemic, all types of library professionals agree to crosscheck information from authentic sources before sharing with others but also take into account updating yourself from time to time with sufficient information as well as not trusting blindly on everything over the internet. Again, the majority of the library professionals agreed with more than one way to stop such infodemic situation, which includes conducting information literacy programmes, social talk, surveys & webinars to ...

During the COVID-19 pandemic situation, when information outbreak is enormous, it is the time to remind the society of the importance of libraries and librarians in organising and disseminating accurate & reliable information. Accurate information is the key to handling a chaotic situation. The exchange of false information seems to be on the rise. It has created a situation of 'infodemic' as stated by the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO). This has not only affected research work severely but has also created chaos among the laypeople. The present study tries to investigate the attitude, perception & responsibility of a library professional for this purpose as they are the essential provider of information for academic as well as a social community. The study was carried through a short online survey with a structured questionnaire designed on a Google form. A total of 150 respondents (N) was selected for the study over four designated domains viz. Library Assistant, Assistant Librarian, Deputy Librarian and University Librarian. The findings of the study reveal that some part of regular citizen, political leaders, attention seekers & profiteers, and heavily partisan news media are the top responsible sources of infodemic; while WhatsApp & Facebook takes the lead as a major platform for this purpose. Additionally, the study throws light on harms done to people due to this infodemic e.g. anxiety, insomnia, depression and negative thoughts. As an essential practice to fight against such infodemic, all types of library professionals agree to crosscheck information from authentic sources before sharing with others but also take into account updating yourself from time to time with sufficient information as well as not trusting blindly on everything over the internet. Again, the majority of the library professionals agreed with more than one way to stop such infodemic situation, which includes conducting information literacy programmes, social talk, surveys & webinars to ...

Online disinformation has been on the rise in recent years. A digital outbreak of disinformation has spread around the COVID-19 pandemic, often referred to as an "infodemic." Since January 2020, digital media have been both the culprits of and antidotes to misinformation. The first months of the pandemic have shown that countering disinformation online has become as important as ensuring much needed medical equipment and supplies for health workers. For many governments around the world, priority COVID-19 actions included measures such as (a) providing guidance to social media companies on taking down contentious pandemic content (e.g., India); (b) establishing special units to combat disinformation (e.g., EU, UK); and (c) criminalizing malicious coronavirus falsehood, including in relation to public health measures. This article explores the short and potential long-term effects of newly passed legislation in various countries directly targeting COVID-19 disinformation on the media, whether traditional or digital. The early actions enacted under the state-of-emergency carve new directions in negotiating the delicate balance between freedom of expression and online censorship, in particular by imposing limitations on access to information and inducing self-restraint in reporting. Based on comparative legal analysis, this article provides a timely discussion of intended and unintended consequences of such legal responses to the "infodemic," reflecting on a basic set of safeguards needed to preserve trust in online information.

Online disinformation has been on the rise in recent years. A digital outbreak of disinformation has spread around the COVID-19 pandemic, often referred to as an "infodemic." Since January 2020, digital media have been both the culprits of and antidotes to misinformation. The first months of the pandemic have shown that countering disinformation online has become as important as ensuring much needed medical equipment and supplies for health workers. For many governments around the world, priority COVID-19 actions included measures such as (a) providing guidance to social media companies on taking down contentious pandemic content (e.g., India); (b) establishing special units to combat disinformation (e.g., EU, UK); and (c) criminalizing malicious coronavirus falsehood, including in relation to public health measures. This article explores the short and potential long-term effects of newly passed legislation in various countries directly targeting COVID-19 disinformation on the media, whether traditional or digital. The early actions enacted under the state-of-emergency carve new directions in negotiating the delicate balance between freedom of expression and online censorship, in particular by imposing limitations on access to information and inducing self-restraint in reporting. Based on comparative legal analysis, this article provides a timely discussion of intended and unintended consequences of such legal responses to the "infodemic," reflecting on a basic set of safeguards needed to preserve trust in online information.

This contributed volume identifies how the information processes of public institutions and citizens have changed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, within a new context that emerged: the infodemic disorder. Public debate is largely characterized today by a crisis of the legitimacy of institutions, accompanied by a crisis of authority in public communication, leading to the emergency of a state of information disorder due specifically to the need to find information related to the coping of the pandemic. This condition is characterized by growing attention to issues related to fake news, misinformation, and media manipulation, that are intertwined in digital platform ecosystems, and the effects of which on democracy, public communication and research, and the sharing of information in the civic sphere are broad and far-reaching. This volume analyzes the links between communication strategies of public institutions, and the resulting citizen communication, in an attempt to tease out how communication processes have changed during the pandemic. It was decided to investigate this infodemic disorder as it appeared in three different geographical contexts: Europe, Canada and Mexico and, at the same time, to bring out the formal and informal coping strategies implemented by public institutions and citizens. Beginning with an introduction to the crisis of information created by the pandemic, the contributors build a theoretical framework, provide contagion data, and subsequently, for each of the geographical contexts analyzed, explore the public communication strategies and those activated by citizens seeking to share information. Gevisa La Rocca is Associate Professor in Sociology of Communication and Cultural Process at the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences, Kore University of Enna, Italy. MarieEve Carignan is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication of the Universite de Sherbrooke in Canada. Giovanni Boccia Artieri is Full Professor in Sociology of Communication and Digital Media and Dean at the Dept. of Communication Sciences, Humanities and International Studies, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy.

Chapter 1. Covid-19 and the Global Crisis of Information: an Introduction -- Chapter 2. Infodemic Disorder: Covid-19 and Post-truth -- Chapter 3. A Review of Some Covid-19 Pandemic Numbers in European Union, Canada, and Mexico -- Chapter 4. We Are All Europeans. EU Institutions Facing the Covid-19 Pandemic and Information Crisis -- Chapter 5. The Practice of Emergency Gatewatching During the First Phase of the Pandemic. An Analysis Through the Tweets in Italian, Spanish, French and German -- Chapter 6. The Covid-19 Pandemic in Canadian Newspapers: An Analysis of the Journalistic Articles as Risk and Crisis Messages -- Chapter 7. Disinformation in the Age of the Covid-19 Pandemic: How Does Belief in Fake News and Conspiracy Theories Affect Canadians' Reactions to the Crisis? -- Chapter 8. Analysis of the Mexican Communication Plan to Control the Covid-19 Epidemic.Chapter 9. Social Media Interactions in Mexico About the SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination Plan -- Chapter 10. Rethinking Our Interpretation Processes: Some Evidence./.

During the recent outbreak of coronavirus, the concern about proliferation of misleading information, rumours and myths has caused governments across the world to institute various interventionist steps to stem their flow. Each government has had to balance the dichotomy between freedom of expression and people's right to be safe from the adverse impact of inaccurate information. Governments across the world have implemented a number of strategies to manage COVID-19 including issuing public advisories, advertising campaigns, holding press conferences and instituting punitive regulations to combat the distribution of false and misleading information. We examine the two most populous countries' governments' response to the scourge of fake news during COVID-19. China and India are the most challenging nations to govern in terms of their sheer size and diversity of their population. Each country's government has taken several steps to minimise the impact of fake news during COVID, within its own political system.

Internet, new technologies and social networks have changed the consumption and dissemination of information. The world is witnessing the proliferation of so-called false news, especially since the beginning of 2020, when COVID-19 became the main issue on the global agenda. Alleged government actions, remedies, advice, etc., are the cause of a multitude of messages that are often false. Through surveys (1115 responses were obtained) and a review of the literature, we explore how the proliferation of COVID-19's false news affects and impacts public opinion in Spain. We also examine how citizens are being informed about the pandemic, identify the main channels of communication used and discover the impact of misinformation. The main conclusions are that, in Spain, citizens are interested in information related to the coronavirus, but there is a lack of media credibility and reliability; the social networks and instant messaging are considered the channels that transmit the greatest amount of false news.

Due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of infected cases, the international community has been confronted with one of the most urgent health crises in recent decades. With the COVID-19 pandemic, we confronted a new phenomenon known as an "Infodemic" or "epidemic of misleading information" regarding COVID-19. Presently, a large amount of unsubstantiated material on various elements of the COVID-19 disease, disease control and prevention techniques and its effects is being distributed via social media, news agencies and television networks. Due to their accessibility, social networks are increasingly becoming an integral part of our lives. They provide avenues where anybody can convey their ideas and post information without impeding or regulating their publishing validation. As a consequence, it facilitates the spread of "Fake News," material that is deliberately false. Because of the amount of social media users and the volume of followers, fake social media news could have major adverse social repercussions. Misinformation and disinformation can have detrimental effects on people's mental and physical health, increase stigma, jeopardize valuable health gains, and result in poor adherence to public health measures, hence reducing their efficiency and jeopardizing their ability to manage the pandemic. Misinformation can result in death. Without trust and accurate information, diagnostic tests go unutilized, immunization campaigns (or initiatives to enhance effectiveness of vaccines) fall short of their goals, and the virus thrives. What's more, disinformation is creating a rift in public debate on COVID-19-related issues, intensifying hate speech, increasing the chances of conflict, violent acts, and violations of human rights, and jeopardizing long-term prospects for advancing social cohesion, human rights, and democracy.

This study analyzes the infodemic in the Philippines during the intense lockdowns during the early stages of the covid-19 pandemic. With the said lockdown, people are observed to be more present in social media. World Health Organization pronounced that "infodemic" poses a severe problem in public health. This article analyzes the fact-checked articles of Verafiles.Org, fact-checkers certified by non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network, during the first six months of covid-19 era. Using content analysis, the researcher examines the sources, claims, treatment, and access to the voice of Verafiles fact-checking articles. The researcher quantifies the variables and coded the data using the tables in order to obtain the findings of the study. Results show that most fact-checked "fake news" claims found in vera files.org are disinformation. It is also noted that Facebook and Youtube are the top platforms as a source of disinformation. The treatment of the fake information is usually done as facebook post or youtube video. It also found out that most of the claims are about Covid- 19 pandemic and political propaganda. Troll accounts, Facebook groups, pages, and websites supported Duterte, and even government officials listed as a source of "fake news."