social media and the coronavirus pandemic

Some of the main objectives of social media apps are entertainment, communication with others and search for information. That is why, with the arrival of the pandemic and the lockdown, people increased the use of platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or TikTok.

According to a study by Sandpiper Communications, the use of social media during lockdown has had a positive impact because people have been able to avoid the boredom of online classes and home working, to communicate with those who could not see face-to-face, and also to stay informed of the latest news related to the outside world. Moreover, social media has given vast opportunities to e-commerce and new types of digital businesses this year.

However, this increase also brought some drawbacks: the so-called “fake news” circulated in large quantities on the networks, especially those referring to the health area, being difficult for people to recognize truly reliable and authorized sources. The severity of fake news was such in some situations that the MIT Technology Review called the pandemic “the first true social-media ‘infodemic’”, referring to the overabundance of information – some accurate and some not –. Misinformation can be very harmful to people’s mental health; it can increase stigmatization and lead to poor observances of public health measures.

The World Health Organization has attempted to address the issue by partnering with some of these networks to clamp down on misinformation. Some of these measures include pushing WHO information to the top of the search results related to the pandemic, removing misleading videos, targeting key demographic groups with ads that provide verified health information, etc. Some of them are already showing positive results in the elimination of misinformation, but there is still a long way to go before removing it all.

Sources: WHO, Warc, Technology Review