People on This Project
- Principal Investigator: Zahid Butt & Helen Chen
- Lead: Shu-Feng Tsao
- Collaborators: Rena Young
COVID-19 Infodemic
“We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic,” ~ Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.
False information about the COVID-19 disease emerged as early as it was discovered, and has gone viral throughout the world virtually via social media and Internet. From an early conspiracy linking COVID-19 with 5G infrastructure to the current COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, infodemic has greatly compromised public health worldwide.
Our research team focuses on addressing the critical issue of infodemic associated with infectious diseases, especially for the current COVID-19 pandemic. We already published a scoping review that explored what topics and sentiment the general public have in mind from social media. We’re currently working on developing a conceptual framework to explore how social media infodemic influences individual decisions and behaviours.
Our future plans include test and revise our conceptual framework and further address how to manage infodemic by infosurveillance. Another upcoming topic of interest will focus on how infodemic has disproportionately influenced marginalized or vulnerable populations.
Publication