Disrupting the COVID-19 Misinfodemic With Network Interventions: Network Solutions for Network Problems

Am J Public Health. 2021 Mar;111(3):514-519. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2020.306063. Epub 2021 Jan 21.

Abstract

Amid the COVID-19 global pandemic, a highly troublesome influx of viral misinformation threatens to exacerbate the crisis through its deleterious effects on public health outcomes and health behavior decisions.This "misinfodemic" has ignited a surge of ongoing research aimed at characterizing its content, identifying its sources, and documenting its effects. Noticeably absent as of yet is a cogent strategy to disrupt misinformation.We start with the premise that the diffusion and persistence of COVID-19 misinformation are networked phenomena that require network interventions. To this end, we propose five classes of social network intervention to provide a roadmap of opportunities for disrupting misinformation dynamics during a global health crisis. Collectively, these strategies identify five distinct yet interdependent features of information environments that present viable opportunities for interventions.

MeSH terms

  • COVID-19 / epidemiology*
  • Communication*
  • Global Health
  • Health Communication / standards
  • Humans
  • Information Dissemination / methods*
  • SARS-CoV-2
  • Social Media / standards*