An Open-Publishing Response to the COVID-19 Infodemic.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Rando HM
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8452106 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:The COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed the rapid dissemination of papers and preprints investigating the disease and its associated virus, SARS-CoV-2. The multifaceted nature of COVID-19 demands a multidisciplinary approach, but the urgency of the crisis combined with the need for social distancing measures present unique challenges to collaborative science. We applied a massive online open publishing approach to this problem using Manubot. Through GitHub, collaborators summarized and critiqued COVID-19 literature, creating a review manuscript. Manubot automatically compiled citation information for referenced preprints, journal publications, websites, and clinical trials. Continuous integration workflows retrieved up-to-date data from online sources nightly, regenerating some of the manuscript's figures and statistics. Manubot rendered the manuscript into PDF, HTML, LaTeX, and DOCX outputs, immediately updating the version available online upon the integration of new content. Through this effort, we organized over 50 scientists from a range of backgrounds who evaluated over 1,500 sources and developed seven literature reviews. While many efforts from the computational community have focused on mining COVID-19 literature, our project illustrates the power of open publishing to organize both technical and non-technical scientists to aggregate and disseminate information in response to an evolving crisis.
| S-EPMC9093051 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundIn the context of the COVID-19 infodemic, the global profusion of monikers and hashtags for COVID-19 have found their way into daily communication and contributed to a backlash against China and the Chinese people.ObjectiveThis study examines public engagement in crisis communication about COVID-19 during the early epidemic stage and the practical strategy of social mobilization to mitigate the infodemic.MethodsWe retrieved the unbiased values of the top-ranked search phrases between December 30, 2019, and July 15, 2020, which normalized the anonymized, categorized, and aggregated samples from Google Search data. This study illustrates the most-searched terms, including the official COVID-19 terms, the stigmatized terms, and other controls, to measure the collective behavioral propensities to stigmatized terms and to explore the global reaction to the COVID-19 epidemic in the real world. We calculated the ratio of the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases to the regional population as the cumulative rate (R) of a specific country or territory and calculated the Gini coefficient (G) to measure the collective heterogeneity of crowd behavior.ResultsPeople around the world are using stigmatizing terms on Google Search, and these terms were used earlier than the official names. Many stigmatized monikers against China (eg, "Wuhan pneumonia," G=0.73; "Wuhan coronavirus," G=0.60; "China pneumonia," G=0.59; "China coronavirus," G=0.52; "Chinese coronavirus," G=0.50) had high collective heterogeneity of crowd behavior between December 30, 2019, and July 15, 2020, while the official terms "COVID-19" (G=0.44) and "SARS-CoV-2" (G=0.42) have not become de facto standard usages. Moreover, the pattern of high consistent usage was observed in 13 territories with low cumulative rates (R) between January 16 and July 15, 2020, out of 58 countries and territories that have reported confirmed cases of COVID-19. In the scientific literature, multifarious naming practices may have provoked unintended negative impacts by stigmatizing Chinese people. The World Health Organization; the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; and the media initiated campaigns for fighting back against the COVID-19 infodemic with the same mission but in diverse voices.ConclusionsInfodemiological analysis can articulate the collective propensities to stigmatized monikers across search behaviors, which may reflect the collective sentiment of backlash against China and Chinese people in the real world. The full-fledged official terms are expected to fight back against the resilience of negative perceptual bias amid the COVID-19 epidemic. Such official naming efforts against the infodemic should be met with a fair share of identification in scientific conventions and sociocultural paradigms. As an integral component of preparedness, appropriate nomenclatures should be duly assigned to the newly identified coronavirus, and social mobilization in a uniform voice is a priority for combating the next infodemic.
| S-EPMC7674145 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThe massive, free and unrestricted exchange of information on the social media during the Covid-19 pandemic has set fertile grounds for fear, uncertainty and the rise of fake news related to the virus. This "viral" spread of fake news created an "infodemic" that threatened the compliance with public health guidelines and recommendations.ObjectiveThis study aims to describe the trust in social media platforms and the exposure to fake news about COVID-19 in Lebanon and to explore their association with vaccination intent.MethodsIn this cross-sectional study conducted in Lebanon during July-August, 2020, a random sample of 1052 participants selected from a mobile-phone database responded to an anonymous structured questionnaire after obtaining informed consent (response rate = 40%). The questionnaire was conducted by telephone and measured socio-demographics, sources and trust in sources of information and exposure to fake news, social media activity, perceived threat and vaccination intent.ResultsResults indicated that the majority of participants (82%) believed that COVID-19 is a threat and 52% had intention to vaccinate. Exposure to fake/ unverified news was high (19.7% were often and 63.8% were sometimes exposed, mainly to fake news shared through Watsapp and Facebook). Trust in certain information sources (WHO, MoPH and TV) increased while trust in others (Watsapp, Facebook) reduced vaccination intent against Covid-19. Believing in the man-made theory and the business control theory significantly reduced the likelihood of vaccination intent (Beta = 0.43; p = 0.01 and Beta = -0.29; p = 0.05) respectively.ConclusionIn the context of the infodemic, understanding the role of exposure to fake news and of conspiracy believes in shaping healthy behavior is important for increasing vaccination intent and planning adequate response to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic.
| S-EPMC8754330 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThe COVID-19 infodemic has been disseminating rapidly on social media and posing a significant threat to people's health and governance systems.ObjectiveThis study aimed to investigate and analyze posts related to COVID-19 misinformation on major Chinese social media platforms in order to characterize the COVID-19 infodemic.MethodsWe collected posts related to COVID-19 misinformation published on major Chinese social media platforms from January 20 to May 28, 2020, by using PythonToolkit. We used content analysis to identify the quantity and source of prevalent posts and topic modeling to cluster themes related to the COVID-19 infodemic. Furthermore, we explored the quantity, sources, and theme characteristics of the COVID-19 infodemic over time.ResultsThe daily number of social media posts related to the COVID-19 infodemic was positively correlated with the daily number of newly confirmed (r=0.672, P<.01) and newly suspected (r=0.497, P<.01) COVID-19 cases. The COVID-19 infodemic showed a characteristic of gradual progress, which can be divided into 5 stages: incubation, outbreak, stalemate, control, and recovery. The sources of the COVID-19 infodemic can be divided into 5 types: chat platforms (1100/2745, 40.07%), video-sharing platforms (642/2745, 23.39%), news-sharing platforms (607/2745, 22.11%), health care platforms (239/2745, 8.71%), and Q&A platforms (157/2745, 5.72%), which slightly differed at each stage. The themes related to the COVID-19 infodemic were clustered into 8 categories: "conspiracy theories" (648/2745, 23.61%), "government response" (544/2745, 19.82%), "prevention action" (411/2745, 14.97%), "new cases" (365/2745, 13.30%), "transmission routes" (244/2745, 8.89%), "origin and nomenclature" (228/2745, 8.30%), "vaccines and medicines" (154/2745, 5.61%), and "symptoms and detection" (151/2745, 5.50%), which were prominently diverse at different stages. Additionally, the COVID-19 infodemic showed the characteristic of repeated fluctuations.ConclusionsOur study found that the COVID-19 infodemic on Chinese social media was characterized by gradual progress, videoization, and repeated fluctuations. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the COVID-19 infodemic is paralleled to the propagation of the COVID-19 epidemic. We have tracked the COVID-19 infodemic across Chinese social media, providing critical new insights into the characteristics of the infodemic and pointing out opportunities for preventing and controlling the COVID-19 infodemic.
| S-EPMC7869922 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundSince the beginning of the new coronavirus pandemic, there has been much information about the disease and the virus has been in the spotlight, shared and commented upon on the Internet. However, much of this information is infodemics and can interfere with the advancement of the disease and that way that populations act. Thus, Brazil is a country that requires attention, as despite the fact that in almost two years of pandemic it has shown a devastating numbers of deaths and number of cases, and generates false, distorted and malicious news about the pandemic. This work intends to understand the attitudes of the Brazilian population using infodemic queries from the Google Trends search tool and social and income variables.MethodsData from infodemic research carried out on Google Trends, between January 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021, with socioeconomic data, such as income and education, were unified in a single database: standardization and exploratory and multivalued techniques based on grouping were used in the study.ResultsIn the analysis of the search trend of infodemic terms, it is clear that the categories of Prevention and Beliefs should stand out in Brazil, where there is a diverse culture. It is followed by the COVID-19 Treatment category, with treatments that were not those recommended by the authorities. Income transfer programs and information on socioeconomic variables did not have much impact on infodemic surveys, but it was observed that states where President Bolsonaro has more supporters had researched more infodemic information.ConclusionsIn a country as geographically large as Brazil, it is important that political authorities go to great lengths to disseminate reliable information and monitor the infodemic in the media and on the internet. It was concluded that the denial of the pandemic and the influence of political leaders influenced the search for infodemic information, contributing to a disorganization in the control of the disease and prevention measures.
| S-EPMC9357377 | biostudies-literature
Project description: Not available
| S-EPMC555877 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectivesOnline misinformation has reached unprecedented levels during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This study analyzed the magnitude and sentiment dynamics of misinformation and unverified information about public health interventions during a COVID-19 outbreak in Da Nang, Vietnam, between July and September 2020.MethodsWe analyzed user-generated online information about five public health interventions during the Da Nang outbreak. We compared the volume, source, sentiment polarity, and engagements of online posts before, during, and after the outbreak using negative binomial and logistic regression, and assessed the content validity of the 500 most influential posts.ResultsMost of the 54,528 online posts included were generated during the outbreak (n = 46,035; 84.42%) and by online newspapers (n = 32,034; 58.75%). Among the 500 most influential posts, 316 (63.20%) contained genuine information, 10 (2.00%) contained misinformation, 152 (30.40%) were non-factual opinions, and 22 (4.40%) contained unverifiable information. All misinformation posts were made during the outbreak, mostly on social media, and were predominantly negative. Higher levels of engagement were observed for information that was unverifiable (incidence relative risk [IRR] = 2.83; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.33-0.62), posted during the outbreak (before: IRR = 0.15; 95% CI, 0.07-0.35; after: IRR = 0.46; 95% CI, 0.34-0.63), and with negative sentiment (IRR = 1.84; 95% CI, 1.23-2.75). Negatively toned posts were more likely to be misinformation (odds ratio [OR] = 9.59; 95% CI, 1.20-76.70) or unverified (OR = 5.03; 95% CI, 1.66-15.24).ConclusionsMisinformation and unverified information during the outbreak showed clustering, with social media being particularly affected. This indepth assessment demonstrates the value of analyzing online "infodemics" to inform public health responses.
| S-EPMC9672499 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a complementary infodemic, whereby various outlets and digital media portals shared false information and unsourced recommendations on health. In addition, journals and authors published a mass of academic articles at a speed that suggests a non-existent or a non-rigorous peer review process. Such lapses can promote false information and adoption of health policies based on misleading data. Reliable information is vital for designing and implementing preventive measures and promoting health awareness in the fight against COVID-19. In the age of social media, information travels wide and fast, emphasizing a need for accurate data to be corroborated swiftly and for preventing misleading information from wide dissemination. Here, we discuss the implications of the COVID-19 infodemic and explore practical ways to leverage health communication strategies to overcome it. We propose the "Infodemic Response Checklist" as a comprehensive tool to overcome the challenges posed by the current and any future infodemics.
| S-EPMC7441141 | biostudies-literature
Project description:An infodemic is an emerging phenomenon caused by an overabundance of information online. This proliferation of information makes it difficult for the public to distinguish trustworthy news and credible information from untrustworthy sites and non-credible sources. The perils of an infodemic debuted with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and bots (i.e., automated accounts controlled by a set of algorithms) that are suspected of spreading the infodemic. Although previous research has revealed that bots played a central role in spreading misinformation during major political events, how bots behavior during the infodemic is unclear. In this paper, we examined the roles of bots in the case of the COVID-19 infodemic and the diffusion of non-credible information such as "5G" and "Bill Gates" conspiracy theories and content related to "Trump" and "WHO" by analyzing retweet networks and retweeted items. We show the segregated topology of their retweet networks, which indicates that right-wing self-media accounts and conspiracy theorists may lead to this opinion cleavage, while malicious bots might favor amplification of the diffusion of non-credible information. Although the basic influence of information diffusion could be larger in human users than bots, the effects of bots are non-negligible under an infodemic situation.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42001-021-00139-3.
| S-EPMC8403696 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by a massive infodemic. Yet limited studies have quantified the impact of the COVID-19 infodemic on vaccine hesitancy. This study examined the effect of perceived information overload (IO) and misinformation on vaccine willingness and uptake within a cross-national context. It also investigated how trust in multiple institutions affected vaccine outcomes and moderated the relationship between the infodemic and vaccine attitude and behavior. A cross-national online survey of residents, representative of the general population aged ≥18 in six Asian and Western jurisdictions, was conducted in June 2021. The results showed that perceived IO was positively associated with COVID-19 vaccine willingness and uptake. Belief in misinformation was negatively associated with vaccine willingness and uptake. Institutional trust may increase vaccine willingness and uptake. Moreover, trust in the government and civil societies tended to strengthen the positive effect of IO and reduce the negative impact of misinformation on vaccine willingness and uptake. The relationship between belief in misinformation and getting vaccinated against COVID-19 was unexpectedly stronger among those with a higher level of trust in healthcare professionals. This study contributes to a better understanding of the main and interactive effect of the infodemic and institutional trust on vaccine outcomes during a pandemic.
| S-EPMC9265924 | biostudies-literature