Ingrid Volkmer
UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

SOCIAL MEDIA AND
COVID-19
A global study of digital crisis interaction
among Gen Z and millennials

KEY RESULTS OF AN INTERNATIONAL STUDY CONDUCTED BY
WUNDERMAN THOMPSON, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE, POLLFISH AND
THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATIONISBN 978 0 7340 5669 6
Ingrid Volkmer (University of Melbourne)
Study conducted by Wunderman Thompson, University of Melbourne, Pollfish and the World Health Organization© 2021. All rights reserved worldwide.
Requests to reproduce excerpts or to photocopy should be addressed to Copyright Clearance Center at copyright.com.
All other queries on rights and licences, including subsidiary rights, should be addressed to:
University of Melbourne
Parkville VIC 3010, Melbourne, Australia

Ingrid Volkmer
UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

SOCIAL MEDIA AND
COVID-19
A global study of digital crisis interaction
among Gen Z and millennials

KEY RESULTS OF AN INTERNATIONAL STUDY CONDUCTED BY
WUNDERMAN THOMPSON, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE, POLLFISH AND
THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATIONAUTHOR
Ingrid Volkmer is Professor of Digital Communication, Globalization and Digital Policy, University of Melbourne,
Australia. She has contributed to digital policy debates at UNESCO and the OECD and published widely inthese areas. Among her recent publications: ‘The Transnationalization of Public Sphere and Global Policy.’
in: The Oxford Handbook on Global Policy and Transnational Administration (eds D. Stone and K. Moloney),
Oxford University Press, 2019) and ‘Digital Sovereignty and approaches to governing globalized data spaces,’in Cultural Sovereignty beyond the Modern State (eds J. Gissibl and J. Paulmann), De Gruyter, 2021.

CONTRIBUTORSElena Altieri, Lead of the Behavioral Insight team at WHO, who provided feedback to the methodology andconnected this study with youth-focused initiatives, such as the consultations on young people and COVID-19
behaviors of the WHO Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health.
Sarah Hess, Technical Officer in the Health Emergencies Programme at the World Health Organization.
Sarah Hess works in WHO’s Information Network for Epidemics (EPI-WIN) team leading engagement andpartnerships during high-impact events. She collaborates with global faith networks, youth networks and theWorld of Work (governments, workers and employers) on research projects, collating and promoting bestpractice during the COVID-19 response, and ensuring networks have access to timely, accurate and easy-tounderstand information from trusted sources to guide response actions.
Katherine Sheridan, Technical Officer in the Health Emergencies Programme at the World Health Organization.
She works in WHO’s Information Network for Epidemics (EPI-WIN) supporting youth engagement andpartnerships during high-impact events, currently the COVID-19 pandemic response.
Taylor Henderson is a human rights lawyer and has international policy experience including at the OECD’s
Blockchain Centre, Paris. Her work focuses on the human rights implications of current and emerging
technologies, and their potential for the empowerment and inclusion of marginalized individuals and groups.

RESEARCH ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This international survey was conducted in partnership with Wunderman Thompson, a global marketing
communications agency and Pollfish an online survey platform provider, New York.
The Wunderman Thompson APAC team was made up of Justin Peyton, Ellie Brocklehurst, Chen May Yee,
Thomas Brauch and Pang Tiak Hui.
We would like to acknowledge the cooperation with John Papadakis, Founder and CEO of the New York-based
survey company Pollfish, who rolled out the survey in 24 countries.
The team would also like to thank Dr Renate Moeller, University of Bielefeld, Germany, for producing various
charts and graphs for this report.
In addition, we acknowledge the feedback to the different versions of the survey questionnaire by students of
the Master’s class ‘Global Media: Theory and Research,’ University of Melbourne (2020). Thanks go especiallyto Preity Bhandary, Rosann Anthony, Bo Chen, Weichun Pan, Boxin Pang, Maria Jessica Jonan, Swathi
Sasikumar, and Ellie Summers. Their comments were important for the final revision of the questionnaire.
The online version of the entire data set can be found on the project’s dashboard: https://www.covid19infodemic.com/

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword
Executive summary
Introduction

viii
1
3

1. S
 ocial media platforms – the global communication infrastructure for
GenZ and Millennials

7

1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
1.7

BackgroundGlobal monopolies dominate – but national specific platforms are also relevantSocial media use across age groups and gender: preferences for visual platforms
Smaller ‘splinter’ platforms require further attention
Social media platforms – different platform ‘ecologies’ across countries
Mobile smart devices bridging the digital divide – but opening up new divides
Takeaway

2. Everyone can be a communicator!
2.1
2.2
2.3

BackgroundInfluencer and COVID-19 communication
From top, mid-tier and nano-influencers – toward social media microcommunicator and cascading interaction
2.4 How many followers do you have? – identifying micro-, macro- and supercommunicator
2.5 Communicator awareness of misinformation
2.6 Communicator and their sources
2.7 Alternative movement leaders and religious leaders as a source
2.8 Content sharing: scientific content and ‘relevant to me’ rank highly across all
communicator levels
2.9 Communities, followers and regional contexts – three cases- Nigeria- India- Brazil
2.10 Takeaway

3. I ndividual crisis narratives – in times of subjective content loops
3.1
3.2
3.3

BackgroundIndications for digital literate crisis communication: breaking out of thealgorithmic loop
From incidental news exposure to active engagement in a multi-source
environment

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

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3.4

Navigating through the multiple-source environment through layers oftrust in sources
3.5 Sources they said that they do not trust
3.6 Trusted sources in the multiple-source environment: the ‘pyramid
model’ of crisis information seeking behaviour
3.7 Layer 1 of the ‘pyramid model’: sources respondents ‘somewhat’ trust
3.8 Layer 2 of the ‘pyramid model’: sources respondents ‘trust’
3.9 Layer 3 of the ‘pyramid model’: sources respondents ‘highly’ trust
3.10 Relevance of search sites
3.11 National insight: Indonesia
3.12 Takeaway

4. The awareness of mis- and disinformation
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4

vi

BackgroundIt is not only mis- and disinformation – but a climate of skepticism andbeing overwhelmed
The perception of fake news
Takeaway

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1 Which platforms do you usually use?

11

Figure 2 Social media used in addition to the ‘big four’ across all countries and age groups

14

Figure 3 Which platforms do you usually use? China and social media platform use

15

Figure 4 How many platforms do you ‘usually’ use?

18

Figure 5 Platforms in developing and developed countries

18

Figure 6 Number of followers

25

Figure 7 Number of followers by country

26

Figure 8 Number of followers by country and gender27

Figure 9 More than 5000 followers by country and gender28

Figure 10 Number of followers and awareness of fake news

29

Figure 11 When a vaccine becomes available, which of the following sources would you look to firstfor information?

39

Figure 12 Not trusted sources of information – responses from Italy

41

Figure 13 Not trusted sources of information – responses from Morocco

41

Figure 14 Not trusted sources of information – responses from Philippines

41

Figure 15 Not trusted sources of information – responses from Russia

42

Figure 16 Not trusted sources of information – responses from the UK

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Figure 17 Not trusted sources of information – responses from Colombia

42

Figure 18 ‘Pyramid model’ of information-seeking behaviour

43

Figure 19 ‘Somewhat trusted’ sources of information – Brazil

45

Figure 20 ‘Somewhat trusted’ sources of information – Russia

45

Figure 21 ‘Somewhat trusted’ sources of information – Turkey

45

Figure 22 ‘Trusted’ sources of information – Indonesia

46

Figure 23 ‘Trusted’ sources of information – Italy

47

Figure 24 ‘Trusted’ sources of information – India

47

Figure 25 ‘Highly trusted’ sources of information – Argentina

48

Figure 26 ‘Highly trusted’ sources of information – China

49

Figure 27 ‘Highly trusted’ sources of information – Indonesia

49

Figure 28 ‘Highly trusted’ sources of information – South Korea

49

Figure 29 Where respondents went to for information

50

Figure 30 I feel overwhelmed by the amount of information on COVID-19

56

Figure 31 I feel the media is not telling me everything

57

Figure 32 I believe that COVID-19 content is biased

58

Figure 33 I stopped paying attention to news and information on COVID-19 in general

59

Figure 34 I feel like my government is not giving me the full picture when it comes to COVID-19

60

Figure 35 All information on social media is the same to me

61

Figure 36 Country results about fake news sharing: France

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Figure 37 Country results about fake news sharing: India

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Figure 38 Country results about fake news sharing: Nigeria

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Figure 39 Country results about fake news sharing: Russia

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Figure 40 Country results about fake news sharing: South Korea

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Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

vii

FOREWORD

Young people around the world continue to show
resilience and commitment towards the COVID-19
response, in their own communities and beyond.
Young people are active producers and consumers
of information on digital media. The information they
produce and use shapes attitudes and beliefs, eventually
influencing their own individual behaviors and thoseof people around them. For this reason, understanding
when, where and how young people engage on social
media is of crucial importance.
This study, and this report outlining key results, areparticularly welcome because they help us understandwhat has been young people’s information-seeking
behaviors during a specific phase of a pandemic, thathas been characterized by an excess of information on
traditional and digital media. However, the value of thisstudy goes beyond the snapshot it provides as it also
helps us characterize media consumption habits ofyoung people in general. This research has highlighted inparticular what information they trust; what they question;
who they share information with and how they respond tomis- or disinformation.
Technology has enabled every person to craft their own
narrative, while seeking and engaging with personalized
and relevant information. We know that this encourages
algorithmic content loops, or ‘filter bubbles’ where users
are not exposed to opposing viewpoints. However,interestingly this study indicates a significant degree ofdigital literacy, with young people adopting strategies tocontinuously seek information from a range of sources,
effectively broadening -and at times breaking- their filter
bubble.

This research reveals that every young person alreadyplays a role as a crisis communicator, engaging andsharing information in their communities online and inperson. Recognizing this role and its importance, weneed to continue exploring and innovating how can wefurther help young people play this active role within theircommunities and beyond. This study is an effort in that
direction.
We recognize the evolving digital ecosystem and its rolein health emergencies such as COVID-19. The dynamic,
interconnected network that young people are part of andcontribute to, poses complex challenges but also unique
opportunities to participate and engage, share lessons,connect experience, access vital information, motivate
and inspire, promote accountability and transparency.
Timely, accurate and easy-to-understand informationfrom trusted sources will guide young people in theirdecision- making and contribute to the response to thepandemic.

Elena Altieri
Behavioural Insights Lead
World Health Organization
Geneva, Switzerland

This information is critical for all those involved in the
response, as an effective response relies on the effective
communication of risk and health information. Ultimately,
information that is relevant and appropriate to young
people, shared on the right avenues and through trusted
sources, contributes to empowering them, by giving themagency and access to solutions needed to protect theirhealth and that of their families and communities.

viii

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY• The COVID-19 pandemic is revealing that global big techplatforms and social media are core sites for continuous
engagement with crisis content for young citizens. This
study included twenty-four countries from all continents
at the time of the heightened COVID-19 crisis, and oursurvey targeted 18-40 year olds, Millennials and Gen Zs– overall n = 23,483 respondents.
• Outcomes show that for young citizens acrosscontinents, crisis communication is not just about press
briefings. Instead, crisis communication is continuousinteraction and engagement across their multiple
source environments. Young citizens navigate social
media, national media, search sites and messaging apps,
they engage with peer communities, science and healthexperts and – across all countries – substantially with thesocial media content of the World Health Organization(WHO). Overall, they create their own individual crisis
narrative based on the sources they use and the insights
they select.
• This study indicates that respondents normally use fivesocial media platforms. Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube,and Instagram are the top platforms used acrossall twenty-four countries. However, smaller ‘splinter’
platforms are added to their individual platform mix
along their individual interactive preferences, such asthematic orientation of a platform, types of encryption,technical features offered, design of interface andnational orientation. Our study reveals a long list ofthese smaller but highly specific ‘splinter’ platforms
which are rarely included in public debate and digitalpolicy approaches. These are relevant components of
the individual platform ecology of users, and require
further attention.
• Results also show that respondents maintained andcurated significant follower groups. While only 13% of
respondents of the entire sample had under 50 followers,
11% had between 50 and 99, and the largest group,
55%, had between 100 and 999 followers. However,there was also a relatively large group of respondents
with significant follower numbers: 17% said they had
between 1000–5000 followers, and 4% said they had
more than 5000 followers. The majority of these ‘supercommunicators’ were from Nigeria.

• In recent months, some governments recruited largescale influencers to reach out to young citizens regarding
restrictions and vaccination. However, our study showsthat it is equally important to acknowledge the interactive
power of the ‘normal’ social media user. Every social
media user maintained communities where content
can quickly ‘cascade’ across groups of peers and acrossplatforms to reach millions of users. In other words,
information shared even in small communities has thepotential of ‘cascading’ – being reshared and resharedacross communities of peers – to eventually reach largetransnational audiences. Results suggest that these‘micro,’ macro’ and ‘super’ communicators should be
more integrated into crisis response strategies.
• When it came to searching for COVID-19 information,
our study indicates a significant degree of digital literacy.
Many respondents were aware of the restricting,algorithmically set content loops of their social media
community and had developed strategies to break out ofthese content loops at the time of a heightened healthcrisis to create their own crisis narratives by actively
navigating across a great diversity of sources.
• When we asked for the levels of trust in COVID-19
information sources, results indicate that ‘information
messaging apps,’ ‘top results on search sites,’ and ‘mysocial media community’ were only ‘somewhat trusted,’
while trusted sources included ‘national media,’ but also
‘educators,’ and in some countries, ‘religious leaders’and ‘my government.’ However, across most countries
and age groups, the digital content of the World HealthOrganization (WHO) and science and health experts
ranked on top as ‘highly trusted’ sources.
• When seeking information about vaccines; that is,potential short- and long-term side effects and otherrelated questions, the social media content by the WHO
was ranked first by 41% respondents across all twentyfour countries.
• Our study shows that there is a trend to contrast andcompare COVID-19 information across sites andplatforms. While contrasting and comparing reveals
significant digital literacy, this might also leave a sense ofan ambiguous information environment. Consequently,
a large group of respondents across all countries said
that they felt overwhelmed by the amount of informationand stopped paying attention.

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

1• I n addition, a large group of respondents across all age
cohorts and all world regions articulated a vague feelingof doubt, mistrust and skepticism regarding COVID-19
content. This skepticism did not relate to conspiracy
content, but rather reflected a sense that all information
was ‘the same.’ This overall feeling of skepticism might
explain why the WHO and the neutral information ofscientists was ranked as key sources that were ‘highly’
trusted. This sense of skepticism reflects a significant
degree of digital literacy and a critical perception ofsocial media platforms in a heightened health crisis.
•T he majority of respondents (59%) across all twentyfour countries said that they were very aware of fakenews: 33% were ‘somewhat aware;’ however, 5% were
‘unaware’ and and only a very small group ‘does not care
whether content is real or fake.’•R esponses to the question, ‘How do you react to
COVID-19 information – shared by others on social
media/messaging apps – that you know is false?’ showsthat 35% of the overall sample said that they ignored
the content, 25% said that they reported the content,
19% commented on the content, 8.6% unfollowed theperson, and 7% shared the content, while 5% said thatthey ‘do not know.’•A wareness of misinformation amongst young adults
is high, however, the challenge is in recuiting them toactively counter it.

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Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

INTRODUCTION

Photo by Szabo Viktor on Unsplash

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

3‘WE ARE NOT JUST BATTLING THE VIRUS’‘We are not just battling the virus,’ noted the WHO’s
Director-General at a gathering of foreign policy andsecurity experts in Munich in 2020, ‘we are also fighting
an infodemic.’ While the term ‘infodemic’ was first usedduring the SARS epidemic in Asia in 2003 to describe theincreasing amounts of falsified information, the dimensionof the COVID-19 ‘infodemic’ has a completely different
magnitude. SARS was a regional health crisis, but the
COVID-19 pandemic has reached across all continents.
All countries and societies are affected. Furthermore,
the global COVID-19 pandemic reveals new dimensionsof globalized crisis communication. Across countries,
citizens who have access to smart mobile phones orother digital devices can directly engage with all kindsof crisis content. They select apps providing crisis news
along their personal interests, engage with peers andfollowers on social media who share similar values, search
for further information around individual concerns on
platforms and interact directly with international healthorganizations. Digital information is constantly updated,pushed to mobile phones by news organizations, peers,and governments. In addition, social media communities
enable direct crisis interaction: to discuss restrictions,seek emotional support, and support one another by
maintaining close social ties in times of tight lockdowns
and restrictions in people’s daily lives.
This is a very different scenario of health crisis
communication enabled by digital devices compared todecades ago, when daily news and press briefings weremainly delivered by national media, such as television,
radio, and newspapers which was only accessible tonational citizens at certain times of the day. Consequently,
national citizens received the same national perspectives
on the health crisis in the evening news, for example.
The crisis communication universe is very different
today: COVID-19-related information is communicatedcontinuously, enabling an ongoing crisis mode througha constant flow of updates and insights, delivered by allkinds of actors and voices, from individuals who produce
their own subjective crisis insights on their YouTube
channels to governments, scientists and the World
Health Organization (WHO), who utilize social media toreach users across the world. While in earlier periods, theterm ‘infodemic’ was associated with the sheer amountof information produced by traditional media, today’s

infodemic reflects not only an unprecedented amount of
globalized crisis information, but also an unprecedented
complexity: an ongoing flow of all types of voices, insights,
comments, clips, and statements. These are sharedon social media platforms or delivered by apps, often
producing not only misinformation, but also contradictory
and ambiguous messages.
The American sociologist Saskia Sassen coined the term‘assemblage’ in her book Territory, Authority, Rights (2006)1
to describe the complex formation of no longer national,
but rather transnational ‘floating’ of all kind of content. In
her work, the term is used to describe globalized processes
which de-territorialize traditional legitimacy of national
structures to establish multi-sited globalized formations.
She argues that assemblage formations are enabled by‘transboundary networks’ and non-national formations.
Sassen argues that these dimensions of ‘floating’ content
produce own ‘normative orders’ and ‘connect subnational
processes, institutions and actors’ (Sassen, 2006: 3).
While in Sassen’s work these phenomena relate to theshifting of national legitimacy, this insight reveals new
dimensions of crisis communication. In this sense,
the infodemic consists not so much of an infodemic‘avalanche,’ a massive wave of floating information acrosssocieties, but rather of fine-lined individual, yet, globalizedinteractions, enabled by social media. Users produce theirown ‘assemblage;’ that is, their own ‘normative orders’
which they select, curate, sustain, share and forward within
their social media networks. In this sense, individuals toNGOs, to influencers, average bloggers and scientists
establish their own normative orders, accessible on the
globalized scale through social media. The exponential
accessibility of digital communication via mobile smart
phones and the global reach of social media platforms
have, over the past decade, created ‘fluid’ assemblages ofdigital data spheres which now constitute the ecosystemof globalized health crisis interaction. The role of national
crisis information as the only legitimate source is shifting
to an individualized crisis horizon where social media
interaction produces new perceptions of what legitimate
crisis information is.

1 Sassen, S. (2006) Territory, Authority, Rights. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

Today, citizens across all continents who have accessto mobile smart devices can continuously connect
to such a globalized crisis communication universe.
Decades ago, the digital divide between high- andmiddle- and low-income countries was wide, but mobile
phone access is now enabling larger proportions of
the population in low- and middle- income countries toaccess social media platforms and leapfrog outdated
landline telecommunication infrastructures. Such an
unprecedented globalized crisis communication universe
stretches today horizontally across all societies withsignificant implications for national crisis strategies as well
as for crisis response communication of UN agencies.

information, produce automated responses. They canraise click rates and high volumes of shares to makecontent look very relevant for social media users, whothen share this ‘relevant’ content further. These nonhuman actors can distort digital crisis communication bycreating a ripple effect; for example, inciting an emotional
reaction from users, which motivates to further share(and consequently legitimize) provocative and dangerous
mis/disinformation throughout individual social media
communities. The significance of crisis communication
shared in this digital infrastructure is particularly significant
in the context of social media ‘influencers,’ who are seenby thousands of followers as legitimate crisis actors.

Within this globalized universe of crisis communication
which is, to a large extent, enabled by social media
platforms, it is very easy to communicate an alternative‘normative order’ of conspiracy theories, anti-vaccination
sentiments, and to mobilize protests in defiance ofnational and international directives. However, once
individuals interact with this content, and such aninteraction produces data points and content preferences,
this specific algorithmic setting can make it very difficult
to explore content promoting other perspectives on thecrisis. Such a phenomenon of social media ‘echo chambers’or ‘filter bubbles’2 around similar – algorithmically filtered– content that enables a continuous self-referential
debate, proposing more and more similar content,
has implications for national crisis communication,
where updates and local implications need to becommunicated to the entire population. However, thepractice of algorithmically filtered content along individual
preferences and values produces crisis information‘spirals’ which add the same kind of content perspectives
without representation of opposing viewpoints. These are
the algorithmically governed processes which contributeto the reinforcement of beliefs, might challenge national
health restrictions, and lead to the fracturing of societies
in times of crisis.

Those most likely to experience this increasingly dense
and complex universe of COVID-19 crisis communication
across all continents are today’s young adults. The
generations of Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996,
and Gen Z, born between 1997 and 20103 are most active
on digital platforms; both as creators and consumers ofdigital content.

Because crisis communication is no longer embedded
in national or regional spheres, the assessment of thelegitimacy of crisis information is another important
aspect of today’s infodemic. Crisis content delivered via
multiple digital content infrastructures, such as healthcrisis apps, push updates, forwarded links, and online
communities make it often impossible for citizens tovalidate information. In addition, non-human actors areembedded in these interactions as well. Bots, trolls, andother types of programmed interactive robots share

It is therefore crucial to assess how young adults acrossthe world interact within these new digital spheres at atime of a heightened globalized pandemic.
In order to provide insight into these new dimensionsof transnationally connected crisis interaction, we
conducted a survey among 23,483 respondents in 24
geographically and economically diverse COVID-19 hot
spot4 countries from November 2020 to January 2021.
(See Box 1 below.) The survey includes a mix of low-,
middle-, and high-income countries5 across continents.
Overall, the aim of the study was to investigate how 18–40
year olds engaged with crisis information and to assess
their individual information taxonomies: the sources they
trusted, the content they interacted with and shared, andhow they perceived misinformation. The outcomes of oursurvey demonstrate how powerful social media platforms
have become, as well as the social, political, and publichealth influence they wield.
Box 1 Countries involved in this study
Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Egypt,France, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico,
Morocco, Nigeria, Peru, Philippines, Russia, South
Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United
Kingdom, United States

2 Pariser, E (2012) The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You. New York: Penguin
3 Pew Research Center (2019) Defining generations: Where Millennials end and Generation Z begins. Washington, DC.
4 ‘Hot spot’ countries were identified on the WHO Dashboard which continuously highlights hotspot countries. We have included countries highlighted as
hot spots in October 2020.
5 We use the World Bank’s definition of low-, middle-, and high-income countries.

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

5

The results of this survey will also contribute to broader
digital policy debates which focus on the growing global
support for enhanced transparency as an optimummeans of making internet companies more accountable
for their operations.
The key role of social media reveals the inclination of datadriven businesses to promote improved transparency
and to protect privacy. Following a review of existing
digital transparency initiatives, legislative regulation,
self-regulation, and multidisciplinary approaches, social
responsibility initiatives, and legal cases, a recent UNESCO
brief6 concludes that current initiatives are largely
aspirational. Acknowledging the challenges presented
by the nuances among varied social media platforms,
UNESCO advocates for a global approach – identifying a
selection of high-level transparency principles that could
be relevant generally to all platform companies.
This report concurs that the development of global
standards for the regulation of digital platforms is crucial.
The spread of mis/disinformation during the COVID-19
pandemic demonstrates the insufficiency of current
attempts to regulate social media platforms and digitalcontent. These insights into the ways in which current
and future generations engage with crisis communication
are crucial to considerations of the most appropriate
approach to regulating digital platforms, as well as therelevance and efficacy of national and international
communications structures and policies – particularly intimes of crisis.

6h
 ttps://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000377231

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Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

1
SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS –THE GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONINFRASTRUCTURE FOR GenZ
AND MILLENNIALS

Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

7Unsurprisingly, the use of social media platforms has
massively increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.
These services are used for crisis updates, direct
engagement with peers, governments, scientists, andinternational organizations. When staying in quarantine
or lockdown, digital platforms have even more relevance,
because social media communities and peer interaction
can mobilize social and emotional support. These areprocesses which have a ‘buffering effect, enablingcollective resilience’ (Marzouki et al., 20217) to mitigate
crisis stress through continuous interaction with the peer
community.

To reach especially young citizens, who are the segmentof the population engaging with multifaceted dimensionsof social media, international organizations, national
governments, and other crisis actors (such as scientists andNGOs) utilize social media and other digital platforms forconveying up-to-the-minute crisis updates. Once posted
on social media, these updates invite users to comment,interact, follow content threads, and engage with crisis
content and to take on active roles as communicators.

1.1 Background
Given this essential role of digital platforms in the
COVID-19 pandemic, social media have become crisis
communication actors themselves. A large number of allkind of social media platforms have emerged over the past
years which operate very differently in this space. Somesocial media platforms have adopted a COVID-19 crisis
policy; for example, claiming to flag mis/disinformation,
providing links to accurate sources of information, andremoving posts – and users – that spread harmful content,other platforms do not have crisis policies in place.
Those who adopt COVID-19 crisis policies use very different
and platform specific strategies regarding the vetting ofalgorithms, filtering of information, presentation, ranking
of crucial crisis content and defining mis/disinformation.
Because social media are corporate platforms with acommercial interest, how they incorporate advertisingand trace individual data points to maximize advertising
effects differs from platform to platform. While Facebookowned platforms are the main focus of public and scholarly
debate, it is important to include smaller platforms inthese debates as well.
Whether large or small, social media platforms havebecome major globalized influential communication
spaces in the current COVID-19 pandemic. The fact thatsocial media platforms occupy this key role for the firsttime on a global scale explains the often ambiguousinternal guidelines, practices, and policies. A study7
by a global non-governmental organization regarding
misinformation dissemination on social media in the
COVID-19 crisis reveals that – despite approaches totackle ‘fake’ news through an internal verification systems– Facebook still spreads an estimated 3.8 billion viewsof health and vaccination misinformation especially in

the US, the UK, France, Germany, France, and Italy. The
authors argue that social media networks have spreadmisinformation for years; however, some ‘did not appear
to have had any focus on health until February 2020 when
they started to covering the COVID-19 pandemic’ (AVAAZ,
20208).
Because this is the first pandemic where social media
platforms have gained such a powerful status on a global
scale, it is not surprising that the internal guidelines ofcrisis information among social media and other digitalplatforms are not fully developed, and – as the AVAAZ
study (2020) reveals – are still faulty. Platforms requireinternational applicable guidelines as they take on key
communication roles in a global health crisis. The specificrole of social media platforms as crisis actors amongusers worldwide has also not yet been fully addressedin national and international digital policy debates. The
degree of this discussion is still nationally focused, and isvery different between countries. However, guidelines andframeworks regarding the performance of social media intimes of crisis are especially needed on an international
level.
This pandemic is revealing that not only social media, but
global big tech platforms are being seen – especially by
young citizens! – as core sites for continuous engagementwith crisis content. Crisis communication is today deeply
embedded in a dimension of social interaction, engaging
with – often transnational – peer communities of ‘friends,’
incorporating selected and shared sources to discuss
individual concerns and uncertainties. It is important
to assess this role of digital platforms in a globalized
dimension, because today, social media reach young
adults across societies – on all continents. As statistics of

7 Marzouki, Y. Aldossari, F.S. & Veltri, G.A. (2021) ‘Understanding the “buffering” effect of social media use on anxiety during the COVID-19 lockdown,’

Humanities and Social Science Communication, 8(47).
8 AVAAZ Report (2020) ‘Facebook’s Algorithm: A Major Threat to Public Health,’ https://avaazimages.avaaz.org/facebook_threat_health.pdf

8Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) show,
about 4.2 billion people around the world (about 53% of
the world’s population) use social media. Of these, almost
4 billion are monthly active social media users who haveoften several accounts.
However, a disparity exists regarding the way in whichyoung adults access the internet, and by extension, social
media platforms in a transnational context. Young adults
in high income countries have smart mobile phones asaccess points, but some also have internet access at
home, as well as using personal computers. Dependingon the geographical region where they live, young
people are connected to high-speed telecommunication
infrastructure. In contrast, young adults in low- andmiddle-income countries are more likely to gain accessthrough mobile smart devices, and have smart mobile
phones as their main digital access point. While mobile
smart phone penetration is growing even in rural areasof low- and middle-income countries, a study by theInternational Telecommunication Union (ITU) outlines
the exacerbation of disparity across the rural-urban
divide in low- and middle-income countries regarding theaccessibility of home computers. In urban areas, 27% of
respondents aged 15–24 indicated that they had internet
access at home, compared to 10% in rural areas. Thesestatistics are further visible in the context of low- income
countries, where 13% of 15–24 year olds in in urban areas
indicated that they had home internet access, compared
to 5% in rural areas (ITU, 2020).
While significant from a broader developmental
perspective (for example, in context of the UN’s Sustainable
Development Goals), the focus on internet access athome overlooks the increasing opportunities madeavailable by mobile smart devices in low- and middleincome countries, especially over the past few years.
Smart mobile phones have become more affordable, thetechnology is more advanced, and the connectivity has
improved. Consequently, an increasing number of young
citizens from low- and middle-income countries engage
with digital communication via smart mobile phone andregularly access social media. A statistical user analysis
by Facebook that compares number of users across large
cities – which can be seen as digital hubs – shows that thecity with the largest number of Facebook users worldwide
is Bangkok, followed by Dhaka (Bangladesh), Jakarta,
Mexico City, Sao Paulo, New Delhi, Lima, Istanbul, Cairo,and Ho Chi Minh. This insight demonstrates the relevanceof smart devices for ‘leapfrogging’ earlier, sometimes
outdated, national communications infrastructure.

Hundreds of social media platforms exist for various
purposes and functions, from creating individual
multilevel interaction around communities with peers,
to dating and gaming platforms. In an international
perspective, Facebook-owned platforms are the mostpopular and – consequently – most powerful social media
platforms on a global scale. Founded in 2004, Facebook’ssocial media platform empire has expanded beyond theoriginal platform to include today Facebook Messenger,
Instagram, and WhatsApp. Although users come fromall age groups, the majority are 18–44 years old (statista,2021) and the country where the most Facebook users
as of January 2021 are based is India. The Facebook
corporation maintains its role as a globalized monopoly;for example, through the acquisition and incorporationof platforms with a focus on a specific interactive feature(such as WhatsApp).
However, a large number of social media platforms
have emerged internationally which aim to also growon the international level. These include non-Western
platforms such as the video sharing site TikTok, interactive
messenger platforms such as Viber, nationally specificplatforms, such as Skyrock in France, KakaoStory inSouth Korea, Line in Japan, VK in Russia, and QC in China.
In addition, encrypted platforms attract sometimes
radical communities, such as Telegram and Parler,
and thematically specific platforms are geared toward
particular genders, regions, or interests.
While globally increasing, social media use is exponentiallyexpanding across Asia, Africa, and South America. Reasonsfor this massive growth on an international scale are often
relatively relaxed practices of national regulation. For
example, some governments heavily regulate national
media, but social media platforms are seen as corporate
entities and drivers of the digital economy. Consequently,
they were, until only a few years ago, to some extend
left alone by national regulators, which enabled digitalplatforms to rapidly expand on a global scale and, in thecase of Facebook, acquire competitors, such as WhatsApp
and Instagram, and are even growing further as globalized
monopolies.9
Social media platforms play a central role in today’s
globalized digital crisis communication universe –especially for young citizens across all economic andgeographic spheres. By extension, the responsibilities
and rights of these platforms, particularly in responseto crisis communication, must be clearly defined by wayof robust and realistic international regulation and crisis
policy frameworks. Local, national and international

9 For example, Facebook’s acquisition Instagram, which had 30 million users at the time of the acquisition were not in the focus of antitrust regulation by
the US Federal Trade Commission.

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

91.2 G lobal monopolies dominate – but national specificplatforms are also relevant
governmental, media and public health organizations
need to understand and embrace these platforms inorder to be able to fully engage with citizens.
The perception of social media platforms by Millennials
and Generation Z respondents in 24 countries in timesof a global health crisis as outlined in the section below isevidence of the need for a comprehensive and considered
national and international approach to social media
crisis communication strategies, and for international
approaches to platform regulation in times of globalizedcrisis. International approaches are needed, because, as
our study reveals, on the whole, users do not engage
with these platforms exclusively or independently; rather,
they interact across multiple platforms, often sharing
information posted in one forum to multiple others, andcreate their own multiple platform ecology.
Facebook’s undisputed dominance on a global scaleis also reflected in our survey. Across all 24 countries,
responses to the question, ‘Which social media platforms
or messaging apps do you usually use?’ revealed the clear
and unsurprising domination of four platforms. This topfour group includes three Facebook-owned platforms:
WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, and YouTube, which
was acquired by the Google consortium in 2006.
However, a further examination on national levels
illuminates some distinctions: none of these top-four
platforms were ‘usually’ used in China, where national
platforms top the list of Chinese respondents. Similarly,
while Japanese respondents ranked YouTube, Twitter, andInstagram highly, the most ‘usually’ used social media
platform was Line – a Japanese messaging app which
incorporates gaming, photo-sharing, and a variety ofother services, including a dedicated News app.
The survey also reveals several nationally or regionallyspecific platforms. Skyrock is a French social networking
and blogging platform which is only used in France,
Indonesia, Turkey, and the US, and Dailymotion, a Frenchplatform, was ‘usually’ used by French respondents.
South Korea is also an interesting example of nationallyspecific platforms. While the majority of respondents
from South Korea (64%) indicated that they ‘usually’ used
YouTube, the second-most popular platform was Kakao– a South Korean platform which has evolved beyond its
flagship instant messaging app KakaoTalk to include 14
additional platform applications, including Kakao Bank
(South Korea’s first internet-only bank) and KakaoTaxi
and KakaoT (budget and premium taxi services booked
through the messaging app). South Korea is also home toplatforms such as Naver and Daum.10
As argued earlier, while Facebook and YouTube exist
as global monopolies, more and more local and/or
thematic social media platforms emerge and attract local
communities through authentic content and interaction.
Our study shows that there are other national nuancesand different perceptions of social media platforms acrosscountries which have relevance for the developmentof national and international crisis communication
strategies.
The following figure shows the different peaks of platforms
across 23 countries (except China) included in this study.
We have grouped countries into their larger region toprovide a broad insight into the nuanced relevance of
platforms across geographical regions.
As Figure 1 shows, globalized social media monopolies
reflect the highest peaks across regions, smaller platforms
also peak in specific world regions. For example, TikTok
has accumulated a significant user base across theWestern Pacific (in our study, represented by Australia andJapan), eastern Mediterranean (represented by Egypt andMorocco), the European region (represented by France,
Italy and Sweden), and the US. Discord, which is widely
unknown internationally, was used by 20% of respondents
from the US.
All social media platforms play specific roles in COVID-19
crisis communication: they enable users to directly
comment on COVID-19 crisis updates, to produce theirown perspectives via photos, to comment and to share
updates content with their communities.
In addition, platforms are used in parallel. While some areseen by users as key platforms which are ‘usually’ used –as Figure 1 shows – others are used as secondary sites,
for specific additional purposes; for example, to link up to
specific peers or access COVID-19 crisis sources.

10 Originally developed as a national search engine and expanding to include nine services such as NaverCafe (allowing users to create individualizedinternet communities), Naver Blog, and Naver TV.

10

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

Figure 1 Which platforms do you usually use?

Social media channels, across all age groups and gender in 23 countries (except China) represented as regions.

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

111.3	Social media use across age groups and gender:
preferences for visual platforms
Given the key role of social media platforms for today’s
young adults, it is important to assess how platform
preferences differ across age bands. While our study
reveals that responses are similar, in broad terms, nuancesand slight differences emerge which are relevant for theunderstanding of users’ social media ecologies.
Respondents across all of the three age groups includedin this study (18–24, 25–29 and 30–40 years) acrossgenders and countries indicated that they ‘usually’ used
the top-four social media platform monopolies: Facebook
was ‘normally’ used by 66.5% of respondents, WhatsApp
by 66.4%, YouTube by 65.4%, and Instagram by 63.7%.
An age cohort perspective reveals that the majority of
18–24 year old respondents across all countries tended
to prefer visual interaction platforms, such as the photosharing platform Instagram, used by 65.8% of 18–24 year
olds in the 24 countries. This age group also ranked thevideo sharing platform YouTube highly (64.1%), followedby the interactive messenger platform WhatsApp (63.8%).
This is distinct from 25–29 year old respondents and
30–40 year old respondents whose most ‘usually’ used
platforms were Facebook (72%) and WhatsApp (67.9%).
A study by the Pew Research Center in the US also
identifies this trend towards visual platforms by 18–24
year olds in the US (Pew Research Center, 2021). The Pew
study suggests that the sharing of visual expressions andvisual insights via photos, clips, and other visual content is– relating to the US – age cohort specific. Preferences forvisual interaction seem to reflect a broader generational
specific phenomenon – at least across some countries. For
example, while 18–24 year old respondents in Australia,
France, Russia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and theUnited States preferred visual platforms (specificallyYouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat), respondents of othercountries were consistent in their preference for the‘normal’ social media platforms across all age groups.
Responses to the survey also exposed some social
media preferences and patterns across genders. While
overall the most ‘usually’ used social media channel was
WhatsApp, a large proportion of female respondents
across all age groups (69.1%) said that they preferred
Instagram as the most-used social media platform (while
male respondents were more inclined to use YouTube(65.7%). The preference for Instagram was consistent
with respondents in the age cohorts 18–24 and 25–29
years; while 30–40 year old respondents seemed to prefer
Facebook.
When assessing national differences, 88.4% of female
respondents in Turkey and 83.7% in Sweden listed
Instagram on top. However, in only a few countries
male respondents listed Instagram at least on rank 2: inArgentina, Brazil, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey.

1.4 Smaller ‘splinter’ platforms require further attention
The use of smaller platforms tends to be overlooked inresearch and in public debate, but they are important tostudy because they are often used in combination withlarger ones to form a user’s social media ecology.
Smaller platforms are generally relevant to users who
prefer a specific thematic or national orientation or
perspective. Our study reveals a very long list of smaller
platforms, which we call ‘splinter’ platforms. They attracta smaller user base who are attracted by thematic or
specific interactive preferences, types of encryption,
design of interface, and so on.

12

However, while the user base might appear as small, basedon the percentage indicated in our large international
survey, this could be slightly misleading. As our survey
includes 23,483 respondents, even small percentiles
reflect a considerable number of users. For example, theplatform Discord, used by 20% of respondents from theUS equals 200 of the 1000 respondents from the US in
this study. Discord is an instant messaging service witha focus on the gaming community. It enables interaction
and chatting with friends while playing games such as
Fortnite. In this sense, the 200 users in the US are a nicheuser base, but have a tight community structure andcommon interest in gaming. These 200 users can still

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

take on active crisis communication roles and deliver theirperceptions to their large gaming communities in the US
and elsewhere.
While platform monopolies are in the spotlight of publicdebates regarding conspiracy theories, splinter platforms
are less in such a public spotlight. End-to-end encrypted
platforms are attractive to extremist groups and – at
the same time – take on roles as incubators of social
movements and activism, but they can also be sites ofradicalization and conspiracy theories, as the case of
Telegram and Parler in the US has shown. Both platforms
were used by specific populist groups who had to migrate
to these platforms because their users were banned – or‘de-platformed’ – from the larger social media platforms
such as Facebook and Twitter.
Telegram was used by 7.3% of the 23,483 respondents
across the 24 countries included in this survey. This does
not mean that these respondents engage in any form inconspiracy theories. The percentage merely shows that
Telegram is a splinter platform, used by a small numberof users who use the platform for whatever reason basedon its feature of encryption. In the context of the global
pandemic, Telegram is, for example, also used to recruit
members for QAnon and spread their political messages.

Anti-vaccination groups in India prefer to use Telegram
to connect to their communities to inform them that the
COVID-19 vaccine is actually a ‘gene therapy’ experiment
to be finalized by January 2023 as a message of the
Telegram community ‘Awaken India Movement’ highlights.
This example shows how users of splinter platforms –despite the fact that these platforms do not attract thelarge groups of users that Facebook platforms attract– can easily function as ‘superspreaders’ of conspiracy
theories which could then float across to other platforms.
In today’s globalized sphere of individualized interaction,
understanding and incorporating splinter platforms into
crisis communication strategies is crucial; not least as themis/disinformation shared on these platforms is likely to
spread to more popular platforms by way of individual
users networks, and/or the actions of these users will
impact on the lives and wellbeing of surrounding citizens.
Our study has revealed a wide variety of ‘splinter’ platforms
being used among respondents (see Figure 2). We define‘splinter’ platforms as those platforms that attract 30% orless of users across our entire international sample. In
this sense, the term ‘splinter’ platform defines platforms
with 30% or less users internationally, however, they can
attract larger users numbers on a national scale. ‘Splinter’

Photo by Emmanuel Ikwuegbu on Unsplash

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

13

platforms are often used in parallel with other platforms,
mostly with the larger big four platforms. However, theonly country which is an exception was China where
none of the big four platforms were used in parallel with
Chinese splinter platforms.

used the platform, 23% of Indonesian respondents, 41%
respondents from India and 33% from Spain. Responses
indicated that Telegram was more popular with males(23%) than females (19%); and was most commonly usedby 25–40 year olds.

The following figure (Figure 2) shows the percentage ofusers across the entire sample.

A transnationally available and thematically specific social
media splinter platform is Reddit, founded in the US in
2005. While the platform has a significant global userbase (it had 52 million daily users in 2020), the structure
and purpose of the platform is to aggregate digitalcontent, as well as facilitate topic-specific conversations.
Members post suggested links, texts, or images, andother members vote these up or down to determine
currently trending social media content. In addition, users
can create ‘Subreddits’ and communities select specificareas of interest – from science to politics to social justice.
In contrast to Telegram, Reddit has been compelled inrecent years to address the spread of mis/disinformation,
hate speech, and harmful content on the platform.

Examples of splinter platforms; that is, those social media
platforms which were used by 30% or less of respondents
across the entire sample were: Telegram, Reddit, and
QQ. Telegram was founded in 2014 by the owners of theRussian social media platform VK, and is today based in
London and Dubai. VK is a cross-platform messaging
platform (which includes video calling, voice-over internet
protocol, file sharing, and several other services) with
end-to-end encryption. This feature prevents messages
and other data from being viewed by external parties.
Other platforms that provide encryption are Viber, Line,
KakaoTalk, and Wickr. Telegram’s privacy policy has
been criticized for enabling dissemination of far-rightextremism, radicalization, and illegal content, including
non-consensual pornography. In January 2021, Telegram
announced that it had more than 500 million active users.
Our study reveals significant user bases of Telegramin Mexico where 21% of respondents said they ‘usually’

Some nationally-oriented examples of splinter platforms
are Tencent QQ in China, Discord in the US, Skyrock,and Daily Motion in France. While Tencent QC is usedinternationally only by a small number of users, theplatform attracts 57% of Chinese respondents. Tencent
QQ is an instant messaging software service and web

Figure 2 Social media used in addition to the ‘big four’ across all countries and age groups

14

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

portal developed by the Chinese tech giant Tencent. The
platform offers services that provide online social games,
music, shopping, microblogging, movies, and group andvoice chat software. As of 2020, the platform had morethan 617.4 million monthly active users, which are almost
exclusively based in China. This nationally-specific example
of an international splinter platform demonstrates theimportance of comprehensive understanding of theplatforms most likely to reach particular demographics of
citizens, including in times of crisis.

While public attention is mostly targeting global big techcompanies Facebook and Google, it is equally importantto address other platforms – splinter platforms – which
are less well known, but are also crucial sources in a global
health crisis for some users.
Comparing responses to the question ‘Which platforms
do you usually use?’ across the 24 countries involved inthis survey reveals that young people were active usersof an average of five different platforms. The country withthe significantly highest number of platform interactions

Figure 3 Which platforms do you usually use? China and social media platform use

1.5	Social media platforms – different platform ‘ecologies’
across countries
was Nigeria, with an average of seven platforms used inparallel. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Chinese respondents
reported the lowest number of ‘usually’ used platforms.
They responded that they normally used three digitalplatforms. However, besides the number of platforms
used on average, there is also a different dimension that
requires some attention. Because the average numberof platforms ‘usually’ used was five, it could be argued
that individuals interacted within ‘filter bubbles’ throughthe specific algorithm setting of the several platforms
used. Furthermore, while some platforms within sucha platform ecology of an individual user aim to identify

misinformation, others, because they offer encrypted
services, are unable to trace false crisis content. Based on
the significant number of platforms used in parallel, it isimportant to address such a platform ‘ecology’ in public
and policy debates of privacy, algorithmic filtering and – intimes of crisis – misinformation, and not only focus on the
major global social media platforms.

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

15

Bruce Mutsvairo, Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands

Deep insight: Nigeria

Fighting fake news gathering pace in Nigeria despite
the spread of social media hoaxes
Sometime in October 2020, Nigerians were harnessing the power of social media activism by using theubiquitous digital platforms to fight proliferating police brutality.
The #EndSARS protests took the world by storm as young Nigerians at home and abroad, took tosocial media to demand the dissolution of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) police unit, which was
facing a raft of accusations including corruption, torture, and rape. Three months later, many Nigerians
were turning to social media again for help as the global COVID-19 pandemic took center stage.
Like elsewhere, social media platforms have not only become important tools for interaction andeducation, but they have also been used for other purposes, including entertainment reasons, as many
are forced to stay at home.
Various phases of Nigerian lockdown, starting in early 2020, have seen many attempts to curb the
spread of the pandemic, with authorities imposing a nationwide curfew across major cities between
8.00 pm and 6.00 am, ordering people to wear face masks in public, and banning intercity travel.
But far from just being a beacon of hope, social media platforms have brought a pandemic of mis/disinformation among Nigerians as persistent myths, hoaxes and fake news relating to the 5G
technology or Bill Gates’ presumed involvement in ‘creating’ the pandemic, have attracted international
attention, particularly in the global south.
Like in many parts of the world, Nigeria’s social media users have been susceptible to misleading andunreliable information, as networks of information-sharing among government agencies, the civilsociety, religious groups, and ordinary citizens have risen across several social media platforms. Whilethese platforms have acted as powerful tools for knowledge dissemination, they have also been used
for propaganda purposes.
Even though only 15% of Nigeria’s total population is estimated to have social media access, many
African societies are communally based, meaning a village of thousands of people only need a few of
its dwellers to be using social media. Collective ownership ensures that information is easily sharedwithin and beyond the community.
The deep distrust in government as a source of information has not helped matters in a country where
religious leaders are as easily trusted than politicians. Some of these influential religious zealots and‘prophets’ have not found anything wrong with telling their many social media followers that COVID-19
was merely a fever, or that drinking boiled water could cure the pandemic.
Fighting fake news on the popular cross-platform mobile messaging app, WhatsApp has proven moredifficult across Africa because anything can easily be shared and believed, particularly among privategroups. To make matters worse, on WhatsApp everyone is an expert.
But there is plenty of hope, as influential campaigns to demystify COVID-19 hoaxes and falsehoods
emerging on social media have also gathered momentum, with Twitter hashtags such as #MyCOVID19NaijaStory and #COVIDStopswithMe advising Nigerians that the pandemic is real, but also offering
ways to mitigate its spread.
Platforms such as Africa Check, an independent organization that has been fighting misinformation
across African countries since 2012 have also played pivotal roles in stemming the tide of harmful
misinformation, rumors and growing conspiracy theories. Community leaders and United Nations
agencies have also joined forces to fight fake news.

16

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

17

Figure 4 Social media used in addition to the ‘big four’ across all countries and age groups

This chart highlights the countries included in this study. The different shades reflect the density of platform ecologies, such as
how many platforms were ‘usually’ used.

Figure 5 Platforms in developing and developed countries

18

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

In light of the previous revelations regarding the social
media use of young people across countries and genders,
this finding could be interpreted in several ways. While firststage platforms such as those owned by Facebook remainprevalent, the majority of users in our study (including
respondents from low- and middle-income countries)
engaged with digital content not only via globalized social

media platforms, but also via smaller splinter platforms
and – through such a mix of platforms – created their own
social media platform ecologies.
To address these diverse platform ‘ecologies’ is of
relevance when drafting communication strategies fornational and international crisis response strategies.

1.6	Mobile smart devices bridging the digital divide – but
opening up new divides
This study reveals that respondents from low- and middleincome countries engaged in creating complex social
media ecologies, incorporating numerous platforms.
The study’s sample only included n = 1000 per country(overall n = 23,483). However, results indicate that the
gap between low-, middle-, and high-income countries
in accessing online content and platforms is closing, due
to the increased affordability of smart mobile phones. As
highlighted by the number of platforms ‘usually’ used byrespondents from low- and middle-income countries, theconnectivity divide is no longer as wide as it was about adecade ago. Mobile smart phones have been – and are – agame changer in this process. However, new inequalities
are opening up. For example, we see emerging divides
relating to ‘data divides’ and ‘social media infrastructural
divides.’ Most data and infrastructures (such as social
media platforms and their interactive interfaces) areproduced in Western high-income countries, while users
from non-Western societies have to align their interactive

practices along these digital parameter. However, divides
between high- and middle- and low-income countries also
exist regarding privacy and data protection as well as user
rights of platforms.
Another issue to consider in this context is the significant‘youth bulge’ in low- and middle- income countries. For
example, more than half of Nigeria’s population is under
thirty years old, as compared to Japan, where more thana quarter of the population is over 65 years old. This isparticularly relevant when considering the interactionof young people with digital content, and consequently,
when developing effective strategies in times of crisis on
the international, national, and local levels. This includes
consideration of youth populations in the domestic
context, as well as an understanding of the social
media ecosystems and interactions favoured by various
populations.

1.7	Takeaway
Digital platforms are not ‘fixed’ media organizations (likebroadcasters), but rather, are fluid data aggregators,
generating data in a continuous process. Subjective
data choices, made by individuals – either deliberately
or through their data footprint profile – determine thealgorithmic filter that selects data and digital content along
a user’s interest. Algorithmic effects across Facebookowned platforms and metadata sharing across Facebookowned platforms WhatsApp and Instagram require someattention, especially in the context of global health crisis
communication.
Young adults cultivate highly individualized crisis
networked interaction, often via their individual social
media platform ecologies, where they select theirindividual crisis information interface; for example,
consisting of specific sources and newsfeeds – often

along personal interests and individual concerns.
Tech monopolies have taken some proactive measures toaddress misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic:
Facebook uses algorithms and artificial intelligence
to tackle misinformation; WhatsApp has incorporated‘forwarding limits’ to contain mass broadcasts and theability to produce instant viral publics. YouTube has
introduced a new policy regarding COVID-19 content,
relating to distressing footage (for example, showing
people suffering), medical misinformation and ‘pranks,’
inciting panics are blocked. However, given the natureof the current global pandemic – and other potential
global crises in the future – a coherent international policy
approach to platform governance in times of a global
health crisis is needed.

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

19

2

EVERYONE CAN BE A
COMMUNICATOR!

Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash

20

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

The ability of social media users to build their own
communities of followers and interact directly with peers
across countries is a significant element of the successof large and small types of social media platforms. Directinteraction is the major feature – not only on traditional
multilayered social media platforms, but also on thosethat engage users through the sharing of audio-visualclips or other images, such as YouTube, TikTok, Instagram,and Snapchat. Others focus on multipurpose messaging,such as WhatsApp, WeChat, Line and Twitter.
Every social media user is a communicator, and has thecapacity to influence those in their network and beyond. A
comment or piece of content shared by a user with even asmall network has the potential to reach a large group ofpeers on an international scale. The sharing of content, thealgorithmic setting, and trans-platform communication
constitute new dimensions of crisis interaction, available
to users anywhere in the world who have at least a smart
mobile phone. Digital content shared by social media
users can have significant real-world consequences intimes of pandemic. The spreading of conspiracy theories
by individuals anywhere in the world, the productionof clips, and memes to warn against vaccination are
examples for these individualized, yet globalized types ofcrisis communication.
In the early phase of social media platforms, around2005, research had a focus on the – at the time – newphenomenon of user-generated content. It was argued
that social media enabled uses to produce interactive
content (Bruns, 200911). The fact that individual users

can create, but also curate content and share this with
their network of peers, wherever they are in the world,has – over time – changed the dynamics of public
interaction of all societies. However, in recent years, thephenomenon of individuals developing, maintaining, andattracting large groups of followers has emerged as a newphenomenon, and these social media communicators
are today an important sphere of transnational healthcrisis communication. Today, social media have become
highly complex interactive sites, and enable a new typesof social media user – the influencer – who are interactive
professionals. These individuals only use their mobile
phone cameras to produce, sometimes on a daily basis,‘live’ content in their homes to reach an audience of often
millions of followers.
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, somecountries are beginning to use influencers in their crisis
communication strategies, such as in Indonesia andFinland. However, we argue that all social media users
have the potential to operate as crisis communicator.
As our study shows, even the ‘normal’ social mediauser maintains and curates significant communities offollowers. These processes are changing the dynamics oftransnational public interaction at a time of a global healthcrisis. Not only large-scale influencers, but individuals
who manage their own community networks, have thepotential to act as crisis communicators and to take on
significant roles in crisis responses. However, the role ofsocial media communicator has not yet been fully utilized
in crisis response strategies.

2.1	Background
The term ‘influencer’ defines individuals with a large groupof social media followers, from a million to hundreds ofmillions. The majority of influencers are leveraging their
networks to promote products or services for profit.
So-called ‘top influencers’ can be grouped around thefollowing characteristics: (1) they are celebrities using theirfame to build large groups of followers, such as Cristiano
Ronaldo, a famous soccer player with more than 289
million followers on Instagram. Others gain an influencer
status as (2) they promote a specific product, theme or
lifestyle; for example, Charlie D’Amelio, a dancer withmore than 116.2 million followers on TikTok; or promotea specific activity, for example or PewDiePie, a gamer withmore than 45 million subscribers on YouTube. Many of themost popular influencers have built their own celebrity
careers. They continuously produce new, exciting content

in personal settings, such their homes to add a trusted
social, peer-to-peer touch. They also need to keep the userbase involved and produce sometimes content on a daily
basis. These dynamics are important to attract advertisersand generate income through a significant loyal base offollowers. They often produce daily content, motivate theirfollowers to subscribe to their channel and sites, interact
with their peers in chats in order to increase and engage
their network. By working in collaboration with businesses
and marketing their own products, influencers can beincredibly successful financially. For example, the makeup tutorial Instagram page of Huda Kattan has resulted
in her development of a beauty empire worth millions ofdollars, and YouTube comedian Eleonora Pons gets paid
$144,000 per post.12

11 Bruns, A. (2008) Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: from production to produsage, New York: Peter Lang.
12 https://www.livingly.com/The+Highest+Paid+Social+Media+Influencers

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

21‘Top’ influencers with a million and more followers aretoday major operators in marketing and commercial
communication, while so-called ‘mid-tier’ influencers
attracting between 50,000 and 500,000 and are lessattractive for brand promotion. A ‘mid-tier’ influencer may
not have a focus on the commercialization of their role,
but engage in national politics, in election campaigns
or just offer their perception on political issues of theday. For example, they may comment on daily news orlarger issues such as climate change within their large
communities who all share the same values. Similar tolarge scale influencers, ‘mid-tier’ influencers are able totake on active roles in opinion formation. The impact of
a mid-tier influencer on the political opinion formation ofespecially members of Generation Z is growing. It is not
surprising that some mid-tier influencers are now evenhired by marketing companies to deliver specific politicalmessages.

It is also important to realize that mid-tier influencers
do not necessarily use YouTube and Instagram, but may
prefer niche, lesser known, and smaller splinter platforms– those which target a specific user group with specificthemes and/or activities, ranging from activism to gaming.
For example, Twitch is a niche streaming splinter platform
for gamers, and some of the Twitch ‘streamers’ act as
mid-tier influencers who focus on game themes, and also
add occasionally political comments. Market researchcompanies recruit not only mid-tier influencers for politicalmessaging but also begin to hire ‘nano’ influencers. These
are individuals who have between 10,000 and 100,000
followers. The focus of marketing professionals on evensmaller communities reflects the increasing importanceof social media interaction, embedded in a trusted
communities of peers who produce relevant content,
led by individuals who are seen as lifestyle models andopinion leaders.

2.2 Influencer and COVID-19 communication
In the context of the pandemic, influencers have been
instrumental in the sharing of public health information,
respecting governmental and international directives,and contributing to emotional and even the psychologicalwellbeing of their networks.
They support, for example, COVID-19 restrictions anduse their role to communicate the need for vaccination.
However, influencers also voice their concerns about
restrictions, about vaccination, and promote mis/disinformation. Mis/disinformation ranges from voicing
doubts to strategic promotion of conspiracy messages,
praising obscure cures to opposing the ‘pseudo-scientificmedical dictatorship.’ Other influencers merely regularly
upload personal comments, such as a British singer, who
is an opponent of COVID-19 vaccination and regularly
posts comments regarding the role of 5G towers in the
pandemic.
Some national governments have incorporated social
media influencers to encourage compliance with publichealth directives. For example, the UK, Finnish, Indonesian,and Australian governments have enlisted social media
influencers and celebrities as crisis communicators.13 In
the UK, social media influencers are also paid by official
sources to promote the NHS test and trace service.

Example of anger against 5G messaging from
British singer MIA

13 h
 ttps://theconversation.com/why-the-uk-government-is-paying-social-media-influencers-to-post-about-coronavirus-145478; https://www.theguardian.

com/world/2020/apr/01/finland-enlists-social-influencers-in-fight-against-covid-19; https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/influencers-tell-youngaustralians-to-follow-government-coronavirus-guidelines/news-story/f090706e65bdd7c15ee23de3639c3a9b;

22Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

Twitter message to influencers in India

Source: Shuchir Suri/Instagram

As Indonesia is one of the most social media-connected
countries worldwide, the government has included social
media influencers in the vaccination prioritization strategy
in March 2021, to promote vaccination. Based on the large
youth population in Indonesia of sixty-five million, which
is 28% of its population of 260 million, social media areseen by the government as a major platform for crisis
communication. Some influencers were vaccinated live on
television to promote messages, such as not to be afraid ofvaccines, among their millions of followers.
As the image below shows, the Indian government posts
messages to social media influencers encouraging themto help promote public health restrictions.

Source: Reuters

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

232.3 F rom top, mid-tier and nano-influencers – toward social
media micro communicator and cascading interaction
Due to the further growth of social media communities,
and the ability to share all types of content formats,over the past few years, the influence of individuals withmuch smaller communities has significantly amplified.
Individuals with as few as one hundred followers can beunderstood as a new type of influencer,14 especially in a
global health crisis. For example, one video of a young
Australian woman refusing to wear a mask in a hardware
store was first shared on Twitter in her community.
This video was then further retweeted by many of her
followers in their communities and had soon been viewed
more than a million times. By 9.00 am the following day,
1157 media items were created about the incident: 644
stories on television, 540 online, 52 on the radio, and 11
in print. While almost all of this content is critical, media
monitoring analyst Conal Hanna warns that the cover
will also amplify her message: ‘It is remarkable how one
person, armed with nothing more than a mobile phoneand some fringe views, can so quickly hijack the agenda
on both social and mainstream media.’15
We call this type of interaction ‘cascading’ interaction whichflows from an individual to followers, then further fromfollowers to their other communities and other followers
and so on. In other words, content ‘cascades’ into a broad
sphere of continuous ‘connections,’ making content
cascading further and further. While it is important tofocus on large-scale influencers at the time of a crisis, it
is equally important to acknowledge the interactive powerof the ‘normal’ social media user who maintain smaller
communities where content can quickly cascade to reachmillions of users. In other words, information shared evenin small communities has a potential of cascading, being
reshared and reshared across communities of peers ofpeers of peers to reach large audiences.
The argument to fully acknowledge those users who
maintain even small communities is also supported byrecent research. Recent research reveals that individuals
who establish ongoing engagement in smaller media
communities are highly trusted, because they generate
and maintain a community of followers who sharevery similar views and values on a personal daily basis.
The impact of communicator of smaller communities
is considered by some recent scholarship, such as by

Zhang and Zhao (2020), who focus on the role of Chinese
diaspora vloggers sharing their experiences throughout
the pandemic. Their findings highlight the importanceof tailoring public health information along the daily life,
values and beliefs, in this case, the crisis perception of
the Chinese diaspora.16 As studies also reveal, politicalcontent shared by these social media communicatoris highly trusted; particularly by members who do notcare or cannot be bothered to actively seek information
themselves.
Overall, studies define social media influencers along
various types of community interaction to define different
levels of actors. Across various studies, influencers areseen as those individuals who produce content with ahigh pass-on value which is then shared among theircommunity of followers. In this sense, Influencer act associal media ‘broadcaster’ who share information andare trusted by their followers. Followers might rely on
this content and also on the way how the influencer
understands the relevance of this content and the specificperspective. Social media followers share informationfrom influencers and might share this content directly within their own networks. Despite the fact that they do not
actively produce content, they trust a specific influencer
and based on this trust level, select content along thecascading model, first to peers, then these peers further
share this content and so on. This is the reason why it isimportant to begin to realize that ‘follower’ can turn into
‘communicator.’
While most studies assess social media in normal times,
these dynamics and nuanced interactions are especiallycrucial for social media strategies of health crisis
communication. Studies in contexts of natural disasters
argue that influencers are engaged in information
sharing and support exchange and are in fact ‘crisis
information creator’ – while followers are engaged inopinion expressing, coping. For example, Zhan and Liu(2019) argue that individuals share content, but also
reflect and interpret crisis information seen elsewherein their trusted social media communities and act as‘influential’ while their followers seek emotional supportand individual advice (for example, Zhan and Liu, 2019).1715 h ttps://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2020-07-28/face-masks-bunnings-viral-video-covid19-coronavirus/12496434
16 https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/multi-2020-0099/html?_llca=transfer%3Aebc6377ed358e92c6160ff23586ae15b&_

llch=13f45dda9a07cfc0a88a0af0e9653fb2cac7b1d6f3c6cbc1e710fd9718db032b
17 Zhan and Liu (2019) ‘Understanding motivated publics during disasters: Examining message functions, frames, and styles of social media influentials
and followers,’ Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 27 (4) 387- 399.

24

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

In times of crisis, top- and mid-tier influencers are
key actors, but also individuals who maintain smaller
communities which requires further attention.
A large number of respondents in our study maintainquite significant networks of followers. Even those who
maintain networks from 100 to 1000 should be consideredas crisis communicator. Even maintaining such a follower
group enables to influence opinions through the sharingof selected sources, through providing personal advice
and perspectives what is relevant in a crisis.

One key outcome of our study is the fact that across the 24
countries studied, a large group maintains communities
of a significant number of followers. It is important toemphasize that individuals who have 100 followers can act
as crisis communicator. In order to define communicatorin more specific terms, we suggest to distinguish between
micro-, macro- and super- communicator.

2.4	How many followers do you have? – identifying micro-,
macro- and super- communicator
Conducted in 24 COVID-19 countries at the height of the
COVID-19 crisis, this study reveals that respondents had– on average –a substantial number of followers acrosstheir individual social media platform ecology.
While 13% of respondents in the entire sample had
under 50 followers, 11% had between 50 and 99, and thelargest group, 55%, had between 100 and 999 followers.
However, there was also a relatively large group, 17%, with
1000–5000, and 4% said to have even more than 5000
followers.
We describe those who had been 100 and 999 followers
as ‘micro’ communicators. These are already substantial
communities where a micro communicator has significant
influence on followers through the selection and curationof content shared. This content has the potential – via thecascading model – to reach very large number of users
anywhere in the world.
We describe those with 1000 to 5000 followers as ‘macro’communicators, and those with more than 5000 as ‘super’communicators. The cascading model applies to thesetypes as well as continuous forwarding from followers
to followers across communities creates the potential of‘broadcasting’ and reaching massive user numbers. Thus,
it is important to carefully assess users with communities
ranging from 100 to several thousand, because these areoften overlooked in their influential role in research, butalso in crisis response strategies.

As the graph below shows, across the sample of 23,483
respondents from 24 countries in our study, only a small
percentage had under 50 followers (13%) and over 5000(4%). A significant proportion had a community between
100 and 999. This is the group which we define as microcommunicator. A smaller group had between 1000 and5000 which we define as macro communicator. A very small
group said to have over 5000 followers, and this group falls
into the category of super communicator.
Despite these different initial community sizes, all threecommunicator types engage in cascading interaction andare capable of reaching significant user numbers.
The following graph (Figure 7) illustrates the number offollowers per country, and reveals interesting insights
into a different grouping of these various communicator
categories in the broader national context.

Figure 6 Number of followers
Under 50
13%Over 5000
4%1000 to 5000
17%

50 to 9911%

500 to 999
18%

100 to 249
19%

250 to 499
18%

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

25

The countries where most respondents who act as microcommunicators and maintain communities of between
100 and 999 (dark blue section) were based are Japan andFrance, while those with the largest proportion of macro
communicators; that is, those who have between 1000
and 4999 followers (red section) were based in Nigeria,with 33%, in the Philippines (28.4%), in Brazil with 26.8%
and in South Africa (25.7%).
The majority of super communicators; that is, those withmore than 5000 followers (yellow section) were from
Nigeria, with 9.1% of respondents stating that they hadthese large follower communities. The second-largest
number of respondents in the super communicator
category was from South Korea, with 7% of respondents
making this claim. Overall, respondents from Nigeria had
the largest number of follower communities. In order to
identify those with 1000 and more followers which alreadyconstitutes a significant network of peers, the following
graph identifies the number of followers along three tiers:
micro- (between 100-999 followers), macro- (between
1000 and 4999 followers) and super-communicators withmore than 5000 followers).

Figure 7 Number of followers by country

26

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

The following figure (Figure 8) reflects the number offollowers per country and gender. The bar on the top
for each country line shows male respondents and thesecond bar female respondents.
This chart reveals some national differences regarding
the number of followers: for example, Nigeria peaks inthe category ‘1000 and more’ overall, with a slight majorityof female users having more than 1000 followers. Thismeans that gender bias is less relevant, and the ability tomaintain relatively large communities reflects a genderbalance in this study.
This is different, for example, in Egypt and Morocco, wherea larger disparity existed and male respondents clearly
had more ‘1000 and more’ followers. We see a difference
as well in France, where female respondents more often
had 100–999 followers; however, more male than female
respondents claim to have had 1000 and more followers
in their social media community. Slight gender differences

Figure 8 Number of followers by country and genderalso exist in India, where more male than female
respondents said they had 1000 and more followers.
These slight differences also exist in Mexico and Colombia.
However, the analysis of respondents who claim to havemore than 1000 followers reveals that in the Philippines,
significantly more female than male respondents fall into
this category. In Brazil, Sweden, Indonesia, Nigeria, South

Korea, Australia, China, Italy, Russia, Argentina, Turkey,
and the Philippines, more women than men maintainedsocial media communities of more than 1000 followers.
The graph shows that gender differences hardly exist in
Peru, and did not exist in the United Kingdom, the US, andSpain.

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

27

These results reveal that, in broad terms and leaving thesenational gender nuances to one side, a more or less equal
distribution of micro-, macro- and super communicators
existed across gender in our study. Results also reveal thatwhile gender disparity only reflects nuanced differences,
national differences are more obvious. Both male andfemale respondents from Nigeria clearly had the most
followers, followed by respondents from the Philippines.
The spider chart below (Figure 9) provides a ‘magnifying’
perspective of the small number of super communicators;
that is, individuals with more than 5000 followers. As
discussed above, only 4% in the overall sample fall into thiscategory, and as highlighted above, when assessing thesesuper communicator in a gender perspective reveals aninteresting insight. Female super communicators areshown in blue, and male in red, which reveal different
peaks.
The following chart shows that male and female
respondents maintained these large networks, withsome differences across countries. While the chart above

combines those with more than 1000 followers into
one category to reflect the overall trends, the following
chart allows a magnified perspective only on supercommunicators with more than 5000 followers. Overall,
4% of the entire sample claim to have had more than
5000 followers and this group reveals some national andgender diversity.
Although both genders maintained these large
communities, there are some differences. Female supercommunicators peaked, for example in South Korea, thePhilippines, Turkey, and South Africa; while male supercommunicators did so, for example, in Nigeria, Morocco,
India, the UK, and Brazil. While the geographical/political
diversity of these anomalies does not immediately
reveal the rationale behind their retroversion, it does
provide valuable insight at the national level, while
also demonstrating the global significance, including
specifically the potential role of female and male supercommunicators in the development of digital crisis
communication strategies in specific countries.

Figure 9 More than 5000 followers by country and gender

28

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

2.5 Communicator awareness of misinformation
Overall, respondents included in our survey were ‘very
aware’ (46%) or ‘somewhat aware’ (43%) of the fact that
COVID-19 information on social media/messaging
apps could be false. Only 6% of respondents across all
24 countries claimed to be ‘unaware,’ and almost 4%
indicated that they ‘do not care’ whether content is true.
When assessing the awareness among respondents withdifferent sizes of follower communities shows, however,that to maintain a community of more than 5000
followers seems to be associated with some responsibility
for content that is shared and communicated in such alarge network.
A majority of respondents, 54% of the 4% in the overall
study who are super communicators; that is, had morethan 5000 followers, claimed to ensure that information
correct ‘all of the time’ before sharing. We also identify
awareness of the importance to ensure to share correctcontent among those with fewer than 50 followers.

In contrast, of those who had between 250 and 499
followers, only 38% said that they ensured that content
was correct ‘all of the time.’
In addition, 30% of those 4% in the overall sample withmore than 5000 followers said that they ‘report’ falsecontent, compared to 21% of those who had a muchsmaller community, such as those that had 250–499
followers. Furthermore, 57% of those with 5000 and more
followers said that they were ‘very concerned’ about fakenews being shared, compared to 40% of those with acommunity of 250–499.
Those who had 1000–5000 and over 5000 followers
revealed similar views on ‘making sure that content iscorrected before sharing,’ with roughly 50% in eachgroup making this claim, and the awareness of ‘fake’ news
(roughly 65% in both groups).

Figure 10 Number of followers and awareness of fake news

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

29

2.6 Communicator and their sources
For those who maintain a community of 5000, this comeswith certain responsibility in relation to the careful checkingof correcting content before sharing with the community.
This responsibility also includes, as our results show, aspecific information-seeking behavior. Respondents withmore than 5000 followers were actively seeking news andinformation about COVID-19 almost simultaneously fromseveral credible sources: they said that they consulted
the following sources where they ‘go first’ for COVID-19
updates and information: ‘national newspapers, televisionand radio’ (46%), they actively used search sites (43%),

checked the WHO’s social media content (41%) and usedinternational newspapers (40%). This list of top-four
sources which were used by those with more than 5000
followers was also associated with a set of social media
sources: social media content by ‘my government’ (34%),
social media content by traditional media (37%), andsocial media content by science and health experts (35%).
However, 18% of super-communicator, those who had
5000 and more followers, also said that they used ‘social
media content by celebrities and influencers.’

2.7	Alternative movement leaders and religious leaders
as a source
Sixteen percent of the group of super-communicators –4% in the overall sample – that claimed to have more than
5000 followers use ‘social media by alternative movement
leaders’ as a source for COVID-19 information, comparedto 6–14% in smaller follower communities. When
comparing the role of ‘religious leaders’ for COVID-19
information among those with 5000 followers and more,
17% of super-communicators were from UK, 15% from
India, 14% from the Philippines, 13% from Japan, 12%from Nigeria, 11% from Australia, 11% from South Africa,
11% from Turkey, 10% from Indonesia, and 10% from
Brazil.
The rest of the countries ranged much lower; that is,under 10%. Although it is important to be careful withgeneralizations, our results reflect on one hand the

responsibilities those communicators with 5000 andmore followers adopted; however, as the case from
India specifically shows, ‘religious leaders’ were seen by asignificant number of the 5.8% of super communicators
in India as a trusted source.
Although these are small numbers, the fact that even 20
individuals with more than 5000 followers were capableof significant opinion leadership reflects the need to pay
more attention to the role of communicators within evensmall numbers of follower communities. The fact thatcrisis content can easily spread through rough ‘loops’ ofpeer sharing, cascading from community to community
across platforms, reveals the significant roles of micro,
macro and super communicators as opinion leaders.

2.8 C
 ontent sharing: scientific content and ‘relevant to me’
rank highly across all communicator levels
When it came to COVID-19 information and the top
preferences of content they shared, scientific content
ranked high among micro-, macro- and supercommunicators. The significance of sharing scientificcontent at the time of a heightened health crisis is
obviously ranked high by those who maintain any size ofcommunity. For example, if respondents had under 50
followers or more than 5000, content that is ‘scientific’ wason top of their list for sharing with their communities. Thiswas followed by crisis content ‘relevant to me’ with thepotential aim to relate back to the personal perspectives
and shared perceptions within their follower communities.

30

However, while these two content categories were on top
among communicators of all community sizes, differences
emerged in the additional ranks of content from rank
three onwards.
Micro-communicators, or those who had between 100–
499 followers, ranked ‘includes an article’ and content
that ‘is concerning’ third and fourth. The top content thatthey shared was scientific, then, with some distance (10%distance), ‘content that is relevant to me.’ The third rank,
again, with some distance, was ‘includes an article’.

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

Super communicators – those with more than 5000
followers – ranked ‘content that is concerning’ third (31%).
Other content categories were also ranked around 30%,
such as sharing content that ‘includes a video,’ ‘includes animage,’ and ‘includes an article,’ ‘tells a story’ and ‘includes
an infographic,’ ‘has a lot of shares,’ and ‘creates emotional
reactions.’
These content formats seem to reflect a quasi-professional
perspective in the how they managed crisis information
among their large follower groups.
The option for COVID-19 content to share which involves
an ‘infographic’ was relevant for 23% of those with 5000
followers and more, while this option was only of interestto 10% of those who had fewer than 50 followers.
When it came to trust in sources, we see an interesting
disparity among those with 5000 followers or more.
Asked for the sources they trusted, those with 5000
and more followers ranked ‘educators’ on top, followedby ‘television,’ ‘newspapers,’ ‘radio,’ ‘science and healthexperts,’ and ‘search sites.’ However, when asked who they‘highly trust,’ reveals that a large group only highly trusted
information from the World Health Organization (WHO)(53%), and ‘science and health experts’ (50%), followed by‘television’(30%), ‘family’ (29%) and ‘my government’ (28%).

2.9 Communities, followers and regional contexts – three cases
In order to illuminate these outcomes in light of specificnational contexts of social media practices, we focused on
three very diverse countries: Nigeria, India, and Brazil.
Nigeria
As is argued in current scholarship from Nigeria,
the internet, and particularly social media access, istransforming African societies, such as Nigeria. As
scholars note, ‘citizen journalism, whether throughFacebook or Twitter or other platforms such as digitalborn newspapers, appears to have established social
media as influential channels of communication tocomplement the old traditional media’ (Olaniyan &Akpojivi, 202118). Consequently, many Nigerian citizens
have embraced social media because it enables themto self-publish and access alternative news stories. ‘Byembracing digital content, they are championing issues
that mainstream media ordinarily would have ignored,
forcing small changes in public accountability and possibly
a new political culture that empowers ordinary Nigerians
in new ways’ (Olaniyan & Akpojivi, 2021). Social media
have become core platforms for civic interaction, primarily
among young adults. Nigeria is the most populous
country in Africa, with a population of 210,834 million (asof May 2021), half of which are young people under theage of thirty. This ‘youth bulge’ is common in many Africancountries, and demonstrates the necessity of considering
the digital behaviors and interactions of young people in
Nigeria when developing crisis communication strategies.
Our study reveals interesting use patterns of platforms
related to the size of social media communities among

Nigerans aged 18–40 years old. These results indicate
contours of specific roles and diverse online behavior ofindividuals who act as communicator managing different
sizes of follower communities. Those with large follower
numbers are extremely active, are heavily using several
platforms intensely in parallel, while those with small
numbers have a preference for one or two platforms.
For example, 86% of those with very small communities(50–99 followers), used WhatsApp, followed by Facebook(66%) and Telegram (54%).
However, those with 250–499 followers revealed a morediverse use of platforms – still favouring WhatsApp (87%),
followed by Facebook (83%). They also used Instagram(67%) and YouTube (60%). Those with 1000–5000 followers
engaged very actively with WhatsApp (94%) and Facebook(90%), as well as Facebook Messenger (79%), Instagram(76%), and Twitter (73%). Finally, super-communicatorswith more than 5000 followers also preferred WhatsApp(87%), but also engaged heavily with other platforms,
including Twitter (80%), Facebook (79%), Instagram (79%),
Telegram (77%), Facebook Messenger (74%), and YouTube(64%).
When it came to the question of COVID-19 content
and what type of content they shared, Nigerian supercommunicator (more than 5000 followers) primarily said
that they shared information that was ‘relevant to me’(52%), ‘is concerning’ (47%), followed by content that is‘scientific’ (46%) and ‘includes a video’ (40%). When asked
which sources they ‘highly trust’ these were the WHO(78%), science and health experts (58%), and top results
on search sites (42%). Around 21% said that they highly

18 Olaniyan, A. and Akpojiv, U. (2021) ‘Transforming communication, social media, counter-hegemony and the struggle for the soul of Nigeria,’ Information
Communication and Society, 24(3).

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

31

trusted ‘religious leaders’ and 15% ‘alternative movement’leaders. While 48% of this group of super-communicatorswith more than 5000 followers was ‘optimistic about the
future,’ they also noted that they had stopped paying
attention to news and information about COVID-19 ingeneral (46%), they strongly felt that all information ‘is thesame to me’ (45%) and that COVID-19 content was biased(45%).
Those with smaller groups of followers had slightly
different sentiments. For example, a large proportion of
those with communities of 250–499 felt ‘that the media is
not telling me everything’ (39%), that ‘my government isoverreacting’ (35%) but only 29% felt that ‘all information
on social media is the same to me,’ and only 28% had
stopped paying attention to news and information about
COVID-19.
When it came to the awareness and the sharing of ‘fake’news, 82% of those from Nigeria who had more than 5000
followers said that they were ‘very concerned;’ while 81%of this group were also ‘very aware’ of misinformationand fake news. Of these, 81% claim that they had ‘sharedcontent with incorrect details at least once; and 58%
made sure that ‘content is correct before sharing;’ and97% stated that they had corrected content if they notedthat it was false. These results reflect the responsibility‘super’ communicator in Nigeria adopt.
Based on these outcomes, it could be argued that thosewith 5000 and more followers take on active roles ascommunicator; they were aware of how to share content
in emotional and personal terms, they were aware of theambiguity of social media content and other types ofdigital crisis information, and were taking a somewhat
neutral attitude by being optimistic about the future,
but also critically reflecting various types of information;
however, strongly trusted the WHO.
India
In India, communicators revealed a different pattern.
The group with only 50–99 followers predominantly
used WhatsApp (73%), followed by YouTube (55%). Thosewith a micro size of social media community followersof between 500 and 999 engaged in Facebook (84%),
WhatsApp (81%), and less so on Instagram (78%); while
those with more than 5000 followers used Facebook(77%), WhatsApp (77%), and Instagram (74%) almost
simultaneously.
While in Nigeria, those with 5000 and more followers
shared information that was somewhat subjective andemotional, super-communicator in India shared content
that was ‘scientific’ (67%), followed by ‘concerning’ (62%)
and on rank three ‘includes an image’ (37%). When it
came to interest in COVID-19 content, those with more

32

than 5000 followers said that they were interested in WHO
health directives (74%), and information about a vaccine(67%).
It is important to distinguish between sources they said
that they ‘highly trust’ and more generally ‘trust,’ which
reveals a quite different pattern. ‘Micro’ communicators
who had between 500 and 999 followers said that theyhighly trusted the WHO and science and health experts.
When it came to more general trust in sources about
COVID-19, this group said that they trusted ‘educators’(47%), ‘radio’ (46%) ‘newspapers’ (46%), ‘top search sites’(44%), and their social media community (39%).
Macro communicators, those who had between 1000
and 4999 followers, said that they more generally ‘trust’on rank 1 ‘radio,’ followed by ‘top search sites,’ andnewspapers and – interestingly – ‘educators,’ televisionand ‘my government.’ The WHO did not rank highly insources they more generally trusted. However, when
asked who they ‘highly’ trusted, a large majority of 68% of
those with 1000–5000 followers stated that this was theWHO, followed by ‘science and health experts,’ (60.7%).
The next set of highly trusted sources ranked much lower.
‘My government’ was a highly trusted source by 41%of those with 1000–5000 followers, and other options
ranked much lower.
BrazilWith 6.5% of respondents stating that they had morethan 5000 followers, Brazil was also a highly ‘networked’
demographic within our study. Similar to many low- to
middle- income countries, the most commonly usedsocial media platform among super communicators in
Brazil was WhatsApp (94%), followed by Instagram (85%),
YouTube (82%), and Facebook (72%).
Those Brazilian respondents who had more than
5000 followers were very much concerned about thesharing of fake news, with 77% stating that they were‘very concerned,’ as compared to the average of 61%.
Similarly, Brazilian super communicators said that they
were far more likely to make sure that information wascorrect before posting, and reported misleading content.
Interestingly, Brazilian respondents with fewer than 1000
followers indicated that they were more likely to ignore
false digital information, while those with more followers
said that they were more likely to alert the relevant social
media channel. Awareness of the existence of fake news
was significantly lower than average in respondents,
with fewer than 100 followers. At the national level, thissuggests both an encouraging shift of the most networked
towards truth, and the need for increased digital literacy
for those with limited engagement.

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

2.10 Takeaway
While much attention has focused on large-scale
influencers, more attention is required to assess thepractice of those who have smaller, often personalized
and tightly knit communities of, for example, up to 99
followers and individuals who had between 100 and 999,
1000 and 5000 and more than 5000 followers.
Individuals who actively maintain these groups havesignificant roles as gatekeepers and opinion leaders, andprovide emotional support at the time of a heightened
health crisis which was the time when our survey was
conducted. Our results reveal that individuals – especiallywith large number of followers – seem to be aware of this
responsibility, which is reflected in the way they tackled
fake news and misinformation, and the type of content
they select to share. The largest group that stated they
had only 1–50 followers was from Russia and Japan,
followed by South Korea. Overall, respondents from mostcountries had a ‘solid’ community between 100 and 999
and 1000–5000, with a small group claiming they had
more than 5000 followers.

Overall, the role of influencers, but also communicators,
to engage in communicating health restrictions and tocommunicate misinformation requires some attention.
Given the role of influencers and communicators within
the transnational social media sphere, attention is required
to provide measures to engage with these groups,
provide digital literacy approaches and communicator
training. Because everyone can be a communicatorin a health crisis, the focus on platforms and platform
regulation is not enough to respond to the emerging
sphere of misinformation. Digital literacy training forcrisis communicators could be a key element of healthcrisis response strategies when addressing future digital
generations on an international scale.

Only a small number of governments has so far employed
a communicator to be included in crisis response. Whilesome governments use large-scale; that is, top influencers
to engage in crisis communication, communicators who
can target smaller, specific communities have been so
far rarely considered to support crisis communication.
However, when including social media as sources of crisis
information, it is important to also incorporate micro-,
macro- and super-communicators, to make crisis content
cascade across groups of fewer than 100 to other social
media communities in the same way than in communities
with more than 5000.

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

33

3

INDIVIDUAL CRISISNARRATIVES – IN TIMES OFSUBJECTIVE CONTENT LOOPS
Photo by Robin Worrall on Unsplash

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Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

While in past decades, national media had the leadingrole in crisis information, this role is challenged by digitalcommunication, which enables continuous interaction
with a great diversity of sites and the creation of – throughthis process – an individual crisis ‘narrative.’
Social media and other platforms use algorithms to select,3.1	Backgroundfilter, and rank content in order to expose individuals to
specific content, with the aim of keeping users engaged
in content aligned with their interests. These filtering
processes work on numerous levels. For example, somesocial media platforms push content to a user not only
relating to that user’s post history, but also to that user’ssocial media friends. Through this process, they connect
content to the level of popularity of issues within specificsocial media communities. Social media platforms also
‘boost’ specific content a user is most likely to be interested
in, and hide content where, based on past behavior, there
is a high probability that the user will not engage.
Ranking ‘signals’ or filter metrics used are set, for example,
based on comments, ‘likes,’ and interaction with page
content shared in one’s community. In the case of themulti-platform conglomerate Facebook, these metrics aregathered across all Facebook owned platforms: WhatsApp,
Instagram, the Facebook platform, and Facebook
Messenger. Interactions, such as replies to comments
on a video who users interact with when content wasposted, what technology (what type of phone, internet
connection) is used, sharing of links on Messenger, and soon are traced by platforms to create highly detailed user
content metrics, in addition to metadata, such as metrics
of users’ devices, and so on.
In February 2021, Facebook tried to implement a new a
new privacy policy where WhatsApp would ask its users(about 2.5 billion worldwide) for permission to sharepersonal data such as phone numbers, contacts, IP
addresses, and locations with Facebook. Given the wide
public debate, and because users rapidly migrated toother smaller – non Facebook-owned – platforms, suchas Signal, Facebook reversed the policy in May 2021.
However, does not mean that the Facebook conglomerate
as well as other social media platforms do not use deep
tracing to provide highly individualized content to users.
While Facebook as the dominant global monopoly is in the
spotlight of public discussions, other, smaller social media
platforms, splinter platforms, (see Section 1), also engage
in data tracing to produce ‘optimized’ individualizedinteractive metrics and data profiles of users.
Social media access is today possible for young adults
across most societies – if they have a smart mobile device
available. However, digital policy approaches which aim toprotect users, enable privacy rights and begin to address
platform regulation are mainly developed in Westernworld regions. While the digital divide in terms of accessto smart mobile phones is slowly closing, imbalances
concerning the rights of digital citizens are opening up
further, are creating imbalances across world regions.
This issue requires some attention on the international
digital policy level.
The regions where advanced regulatory approaches arein place and quite specific to at least target some of theprocedures of capturing user profile metrics and otherprivacy issues are, for example, the European Unionand the UK. For example, the General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union outlines privacyof social media users and considers privacy protection
broadly, emphasizing the rights of the ‘data subject’ within
this complex data ecosystem, which includes social media
and other data providers, services, and platforms.
The phenomenon of algorithmic selection of interactive
metrics, and the selection through other metrics of highly
individualized content signifies the opportunities andautomated restrictions of content presentation on an
individual platform a user is exposed to. Opportunities
of such preselected content are that users can engage
with content they are interested in; however, this alsomeans that they are cut off from other potential content
perspectives. In this sense, individual social media users
are engaging with a personalized limited communicativeenvironment in the context of a crisis, such as the
COVID-19 pandemic.
These issues are relevant to our study because social
media algorithms limits a user to a specific crisis content
horizon even when searching for crisis information. Oncea user’s content selection and ranking is set by algorithmic
filtering, it creates an advancing self-referential loop
dynamic as the user engages with similar types of crisis
content and interacts with peers who have similar interests.
Through this behavior, a highly subjective communicativecrisis horizon is created that is not only affirming opinions,but is also continuously reassuring behavior.
While these issues are addressed in scholarship intimes of, for example, election campaigns. However, theoutlined ‘looping’ dynamics and – in consequence – theformation of subjective crisis horizons have implications

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

35

for COVID-19 communication on a global scale. These
interactive processes create and stabilize certain
sentiments and perceptions which are, through content
selections, continuously revised and regenerated along a
specific metrical algorithmic scope within this subjective‘loop’ structure. The result is that, as various studies
reveal in contexts of political communication, for example,
individuals might rather engage with opinion-confirming
content than with opinion-challenging perspectives.
Consequently, and from a broader societal perspective,these individualized communicative loops could produce
individual segregation, leading to polarization; forexample, of political debates – processes which fracture
and unbalance public debate in democratic societies intimes of a health crisis. As has been pointed out, theseloop formations are relevant to the individualization ofcrisis communication. Given the globalized reach of social
media, content is generated across an international scope
to provide individualized content loops. In this sense, weare seeing a process of individualized globalization ofcrisis communication with implications on national crisis
responses.
Studies address these phenomena in ‘normal’ times, butthese issues require special attention in times of a global
pandemic. While public debate addresses misinformationdelivered on social media and other platforms, thefact that users are engaging with a subjective, limited
crisis information environment which constitutes a loop
narrative is an important issue to address.

3.2	Indications for digital literate crisis communication:
breaking out of the algorithmic loop
Our study reveals an interesting pattern of informationseeking behavior among respondents from all 24
countries, which indicates that many respondents are infact aware of the restricting, algorithmically set content
loops of their social media community, and seem to havedeveloped strategies to break out of their content loop to
actively search for information elsewhere.
Results indicate might be exposed to content loops, but
respondents are no longer passive receivers of preselected
content. Our study produces insight into the way how they
develop strategies taking them out of algorithmic loops toactively navigate across a multiple source environment.
Individual social media communities have specific roles
in normal times, and numerous studies identify theseroles in relation to social communication; for example, incontexts of building community resilience (see Rachunok
et al., 202119). In crisis times, and especially in times ofa heightened national health crisis in a global pandemic
when this study was conducted, strategies respondents inour survey seem to develop to move beyond social media
loops: (1) to explore a great diversity of crisis information
sources; and to actively engage in (2) additional search on

search platforms; and (3) interact on specific social media
content sites with transnational neutral actors, such as the
WHO and scientists to produce their own crisis narrative.
Some scholars argue that in normal times and, forexample, in contexts of political information, ‘for mostusers, exposure to information about politics and publicaffairs in social media is not their primary intention whenaccessing their social media feeds. In other words, mostusers encounter such information incidentally’ (Lee &Xenos, 2020: 220). This assumption characterizes theincidental type of information behavior among manysocial media users in normal times when they ‘just’ comeacross a meme, a clip or a link that peers share.
However, our study reveals that in heightened crisis
periods, this information-seeking behavior is different.
It seems that their own social media community is lessrelevant and even not really trusted. As our results
below indicate, respondents of our survey across the 24
countries actively engage in seeking updates and crisis
information elsewhere which reflects significant digitalcrisis communication literacy.

19 Rachunok, B., Bennett, J., Flage, R., Nateghi, R. (2021) ‘A path forward for leveraging social media to improve the study of community resilience,’

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 59. 102236.
20 Lee, S., Xenos, M. (2020) ‘Incidental news exposure via social media and political participation: Evidence of reciprocal effects,’ New Media & Society. 00(0)
1-24,

36

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

3.3 F rom incidental news exposure to active engagement
in a multi-source environment
Overall, in times of a heightened health crisis, respondents
engage with social media; however, with social media
content produced by internationally trusted and neutral
sources. The incidental exposure to content producedby peer-to-peer social media communities seems to beless relevant. Instead, respondents actively navigate to adiversity of sources. Our study reveals that the incidental
exposure to news, often highlighted in research as a new
type of news consumption among young social media
users, is – in a global health crisis – replaced by active
engagement with a diversity of sites, to deliberately leave
their social media community loop in order to explore
numerous crisis perspectives.
We have identified broad patterns of such a figuration ofactive navigation across the multiple-source environmentof young adults with and beyond social media. Overall,results indicate a significant degree of digital literacy.
Results also show degrees of skepticism potentiallycaused by the sheer number of voices competing daily forcrisis updates within the international interactive spheres
young adults engage with – wherever they are, just usinga mobile smart device.
For example, when respondents across all countries wereasked, ‘To which of the following sources do you go firstfor COVID-19 information and updates?,’ and they were
presented with a number of multiple choice responses ofdiverse sources, respondents between 18–40 years acrossthe 24 countries revealed an interesting intertwined
information-seeking behavior beyond their social media
community. The aim of this question was to understandwhich their most important sources are when obtaining
new crisis information.
The sites where they went to ‘first’ when seeking
COVID-19 information and updates were national
newspapers, television, and radio, accessed first by 43%
of respondents across all 24 countries and age groups.
This is understandable, as information about the local
community where they are physically based is crucial ina health crisis. Across all countries, 36% of respondents
stated that they were ‘actively searching using searchsites’ and 35% used international newspapers, televisionand radio’ (35%). They also engaged in a diversity ofsocial media content; that is, social media content from‘traditional media’ (34%), ‘social media content by the WHO’
(31%), ‘social media content by science and health experts’(28%), and from ‘my government’ (28%). As the question
asked for the sites where they went first to get updates,

these responses reflect a combination of national media
and digital sites. The intention of this question was toassess which source sets their initial crisis agenda.
Despite the very different countries, as well as the broad
age group 18-40 years involved in this study, the patternwhere they go ‘first’ to seek crisis information and updates
was somewhat identical across the three age cohorts, 18–
24, 25–29, and 30–40 years. The only age band specificdifference was the role of ‘national newspapers, televisionand radio.’ These national media were used in slightly
different intensities across the three age bands: 37% of
19–24 year olds used these as their first source whenseeking updates. Of the middle cohort, 25–29 years, 44%went to national media first, as did 48% of 30–40 year
old respondents. This nuanced difference is expected,
because it can be assumed that the youngest age cohorts
used traditional media less; however, and importantly, in ahealth crisis, they still used national media as an importantfirst information source. While ‘actively searching using
search sites’ was the second source by 18-24 years
olds with 33% of respondents making this statement,‘international newspapers, television and radio’ wasranked second among 38% of 30-40 year olds, followedby ‘actively searching on search sites’ (37%).
We could argue that respondents seemed to accessnumerous sources almost in parallel. There were nosources that really peaked; for example, capturing morethan 60% of responses as was the case in the mass media
age, where national media revealed massive user peaks
as a truly national ‘mass medium’ in times of a national
crisis.
Today, we see a long list of perhaps even simultaneously
used sites. The long list further confirms the assumptionthat Millennials and GenZ navigate across anunprecedented seamless globalized multiple source
environment. It is an active navigation, also revealed by thehigh rank of search sites when asked where they go ‘first’for updates. and not a passive behavior of information
exposure.
Our study reveals that – overall – respondents across all
countries, seemed to actively link, contrast and compare
crisis content across a universe of individually selectedsites, online and offline. They also used co-workers,
educators, family (23%), and friends (20%) as ‘first’ sources.
The French philosopher Bruno Latour proposed a theory,
called the actor-network theory some time ago. He argues
that when seeking information, all types of sources –Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

37human and non-human – need to be understood asinteractive ‘agents,’ each changing the process of meaningmaking through the specific components incorporated
into subjectively created pathways how information isperceived (Latour, 200721). Following Latour, this would
mean creating an individual perception of the crisis is
influenced by (1) each subjectively actively chosen source– or in Latour’s language, ‘actant’ – but also by the (2)order, the figuration or ‘chronography’ of actively linking
these sites to make (3) individual sense of the crisis.

It is interesting that almost no one claimed to use ‘social
networks in general’ as a site to go first when seeking
updates on the crisis. This is a somewhat surprisingoutcome, because it is often argued that social media
users remain in their communities to engage with, forexample, political information via shared information
by peers. This information-seeking behavior seems tochange in times of a serious health crisis, where daily
updates across a diversity of topics are continuously
needed and social networks in general are less relevant.

Such production of individual crisis communication
narratives within an enlarged globalized multiple-source
environment by young adults across countries who haveaccess to smart mobile devices requires attention bynational governments and international organizations
when drafting crisis response strategies.

We also asked where they would go to gain information
about vaccination. The question was, ‘When a vaccine
becomes available, which of the following sources would
you look to first for information?’ The question regarding
information about vaccination aimed to assess how
respondents looked for deeper insight into a somewhat
stable crisis-related issue that does not change day-byday as other crisis content does and continuous updates
are necessary.

The high rank of search sites reflects that respondents had
additional individualized information needs or required
additional information about what was presented innational media. Despite the fact that respondents areintense users of social media (as the number of platforms
used across all countries indicates, see Section 1), it issomewhat surprising that social media content by friends,
and overall, their social media community, were not thefirst sites they went to when seeking COVID-19 information
at the time of a heightened crisis. ‘Social media content byfriends’ ranks quite low also among 18-24 years olds when
asked where they go ‘first’ for updates. Only 14.9% went
to social media content by friends in this age group, 16%
in the age group 25-29 and 16% also in the age group30-40 years.
We also offered response options for specific social media
content to the question ‘To which of the following sources
do you go first for COVID-19 information and updates?’.
Responses reveal that ‘social media by traditional media’(34.2%) was ranked fourth (after national media, searchsites, international media, see above), followed by the
WHO’s social media sites (31.5%), social media content
by science, and health experts (28.8%), and social
media content by ‘my government’ (28.2%). The rest ofsocial media sites, such as ‘my friends’ (16.1%), ‘social
media content by my family’ (12.8%), but also ‘social
media content by celebrities and influencers (11.6%) by‘alternative movement leaders’ (10.3%) ranked much
lower.

As the graph below indicates, when it came to information
about vaccines; that is, potential short- and long-term side
effects and other related problematic issues of such a new
medication, the social media content by the WHO ranked
first (41%) among all respondents. This is perhaps dueto the fact that they could directly engage with neutral
experts and science content to careful investigate all sidesof the issue. Rank two were national newspapers, televisionand radio (36%) and rank three was the statement ‘actively
searching using search sites’ (32%). However, only a small
number indicated that they relied ‘first’ on their own
social media community of friends regarding vaccine
information with only 8.6% making this statement. Thisis also an indication for the argument that respondents
developed individual narratives, using all types of sites
and sources beyond their social media communities.
The question regarding which sources respondents
selected first when planning to obtain information about
vaccines is insightful, because it involved an information
navigation pattern to produce in-depth backgrounddetails of an issue that promises to be a remedy forhumanity, but also includes risks.

21 Latour, B. (2007) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network- Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

38

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

Figure 11 W hen a vaccine becomes available, which of the following sources would you look to first for
information?

Entire sample across age groups, gender, and countries.

This information-seeking navigation pattern reveals
intertwined core sites in the context of in-depth
information-seeking regarding a long-term issue, suchas vaccination. The first choice is (1) social media content
by the WHO, and this position is potentially related tothe opportunity for in-depth interaction with all types of
insights and health actors of a ‘neutral’ organization’s social
media community. This information-seeking behavior
is followed by adopting (2) local national orientation via
national newspapers, television and radio, and to (3)then search for further personalized information, and(4) following up with international news media before
engaging with social media content, by (5) scientists, and(6) the government. The WHO’s social media content was
the first site for all age groups to check for vaccination,and there are also no significant differences along genderlines before turning to international media.

However, there were slight differences along a few national
contexts: for example, 43% of respondents from Russia
ranked search sites first when seeking information about
vaccination, followed (with some distance) by national
newspapers, television, and radio (31%) and – again withsome distance – by the WHO’s social media content, whichranked third, with only 26% of respondents claiming to use
when searching first for vaccination. National differences
are also reflected in responses from South Korea, where
WHO social media content was only used by 19%, andsearch sites, national media, international media, andgovernment social media sites were the first five sites
respondents said they would use to gain vaccination
information.

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

39

3.4	Navigating through the multiple-source environment
through layers of trust in sources
Here we assessed how respondents applied different
degrees of trust to potential crisis information sources.
These different levels of trust reflect parameter whichenable us to assess how they built up their individual crisis
communication horizons. In order to identify these layersof trust in nuances, our survey included a question asking
respondents to identify the level of trust in sources andthey were presented with a list of sources.
Surprisingly, when comparing results across all countries
only 9% said that they ‘highly’ trusted ‘their social media
community’ at the time of a heightened national healthcrisis when this survey was conducted. Equally surprising
is the outcome that only 7% ‘highly’ trusted ‘informationfrom messaging apps’ (7%), while the list of ‘highly’ trusted
sources was topped by the WHO in general (45%), ‘scienceand health experts’ (43%). A middle field were ‘family’(22%), ‘my government’ (20%), topped results on searchsites (15%). Overall across the entire sample, ‘religious
leaders’ (11%) were slightly more ‘highly’ trusted than ‘mysocial media community.’

As mentioned earlier, results reveal that respondents wereactive and digitally literate in their information-seeking
behavior, and were navigating across the global multiplesource environment to obtain very diverse information
and updates about the crisis. They developed their own
crisis narratives, and searched actively.
In order to identify the metrics of these subjective narratives,
developed within the multiple source environment, weused nuanced parameter of different levels of trust to
identify the subjective perception of sources within theircomplex multiple-source environment.
We asked our participants to indicate their level of trustin fifteen different sources as multiple responses, and toindicate if they ‘don’t trust,’ ‘somewhat trust,’ ‘trust,’ and‘highly trust.’

3.5 Sources they said that they do not trust
Interestingly, an important insight reveals sources theysaid that they do not trust, which were reported across theentire sample, age group, and gender: ‘religious leaders,’
who were not trusted by 33%.
On rank 2 of sources they do not trust was ‘informationfrom messaging apps,’ stated by 26.2%, anotherinteresting sentiment, which indicates a substantial
skepticism regarding digital tools. The third source
respondents of the entire sample reported that they did
not trust was ‘my government’ (17%) followed by ‘my social
media community’ (16%). This perception was similar
across all age groups.
While this general pattern remained more or less stable
across countries, there were slight differences acrosscountries. For example, 30% of respondents from
Colombia said that they did not trust ‘information andmessaging apps;’ in Egypt 22% said this. One of thesources a majority did not trust in Egypt were ‘alternative
movement leaders’ (21%); similarly, 23% of respondents
from India said this.

40

The major source that was not trusted in Indonesia werealso ‘information and messaging apps’ (23%) and in Italy
58% of respondents felt this way. In South Africa 28%, inSpain 39%, in the UK 36% and the US 39% said that they
did not trust ‘information from messaging apps,’ and 29%
respondents from the US said that they did not trust theirsocial media community. The top source not trusted by
Chinese respondents were religious leaders (26.4%), while
all other sources in the ‘don’t trust’ category range much
lower, from 3.4% who did not trust ‘my government,’ ‘topsearch sites’ (7.5%), 10.8% ‘my social media community,’
and 9.9% did not trust ‘information and messaging apps.’
Other national nuances are reflected in the tables
below, selected across very different world regions: Italy,
Morocco, the Philippines, the UK, and Russia, where 44%
said that they did not trust religious leaders, and 31% said
that they did not trust alternative movement leaders.
Each of the following graphs reflects a national perspective
on not trusted sources.
The insight into the patterns of not trusted sources is a
first indicator of how respondents perceived the crisis
source environment.

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

Figure 12 N ot trusted sources of information – responses from Italy ot trusted sources of information – responses from Morocco
Figure 13 N ot trusted sources of information – responses from Philippines
Figure 14 N

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

41

Figure 15 N ot trusted sources of information – responses from Russia

Figure 16 N ot trusted sources of information – responses from the UK

Figure 17 N ot trusted sources of information – responses from Colombia

42

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

3.6	Trusted sources in the multiple-source environment: the‘pyramid model’ of crisis information seeking behaviour
We asked the question ‘when it comes to trust in sources,
people have different opinions’ and they were presented
with a number of sources. Response options where ‘don’t
trust’ (see paragraph above) ‘somewhat trust,’ ‘trust,’ and‘highly trust.’
Responses reveal indications of what we call a ‘pyramid
model’ of crisis information-seeking behavior. The broadbase of the pyramid are the large number of sources
respondents ‘somewhat’ trust. This segment is broad andindicates these somewhat trusted sources might be partof their individual multiple source environment which theymight navigate when seeking broad information.
The middle layer of the pyramid is already smaller andincludes some sources they actually ‘trust.’ The top
smallest layer of the pyramid only includes a small numberof sources they ‘highly trust.’ This model reflects not only
their individual scopes of trusted sources but also a small
number of sources they ‘highly’ trust at the time of aheightened health crisis.

Our study did not ask how respondents then contrasted
and compared vertically across these layers and we canonly assume how these three layers interact. For example,
it could be guessed that information obtained from the‘highly’ trusted source might provide insights which werethen used to compare to information by ‘trusted’ sources.
It could also be assumed that information obtained fromthe ‘highly’ trusted source caused other sources to be
only trusted ‘somewhat.’ These can only be assumptions,because our survey did not include these types ofquestions.
However, results clearly suggest a ‘pyramid model’ of
information-seeking behavior along notions of trust.
Outcomes reveal different layers of such a pyramid,
which are outlined below and graphs are included toreflect national nuances regarding the sources listed ineach trust level. Overall, this pyramid model constitutes
the parameter of the individually constructed horizons ofcrisis communication.

Figure 18 ‘Pyramid model’ of information-seeking behaviour

LAYER 3:‘highly’trust
LAYER 2:‘trust’
LAYER 1:‘somewhat’

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43

3.7	Layer 1 of the ‘pyramid model’: sources respondents‘somewhat’ trust
The first layer, the base of the individual crisis horizon, aresources they ‘somewhat’ trusted. ‘Somewhat’ suggeststhat these sites are acknowledged as potential information
source in times of a crisis and ‘checked,’ but ‘real,’ ‘highly
trusted’ information is sought elsewhere.
Assessing outcomes across the entire sample, across all
countries and gender, shows that, not media or social
media, but rather personal contacts and relations, such as‘co-workers’ (46%) and ‘friends’ (45%) were listed on top in
this category of only ‘somewhat’ trusted sources. ‘My social
media community’ was ‘somewhat’ trusted by 42.1%. The
following sites are ‘information from messaging apps’(39.2%), ‘top results on search sites’ (36.2.%) and ‘family’(35.7%).
Overall, across the entire sample of respondents in 24
countries, this layer of ‘somewhat’ trusted sources wasquite broad.
However, the level in which they ‘somewhat’ trust; that is,
the pattern of density of this layer of ‘somewhat’ trusted
sources is different when comparing countries.
The category ‘somewhat trust’ is naturally quite broad anddense, yet while, this was the case in most countries, there
are national contexts where sources that are ‘somewhat
trusted’ cluster around four sources, including co-workers

44

and friends, alternative movement leaders, my social
media community and information from messaging apps,
as in Brazil, Colombia, Russia and Turkey. See tables below.
Respondents from Brazil said that they somewhat trust
co-workers and friends, in addition to their social media
community, information, and messaging apps, as well as
alternative movement leaders, on almost the same level.
These were the key sources in their broader information
universe of ‘somewhat trusted’ sources.
Respondents from Russia listed a large number of sources
as part of their ‘somewhat’ trusted multiple source
information environment, as the graph below shows. It isquite dense, for example, in Russia, where respondents
said that they ‘somewhat trust’ a large number of sources,
as the graph below outlines, where co-workers rank on
top, followed by newspapers 49.1%, ‘my social media
community,’ and information and messaging apps but
also 41% say the only somewhat trust ‘top results ofsearch sites.’ The WHO was ‘somewhat trusted’ by 29.8%.
In contrast, in Turkey, the top ranks of ‘somewhat trusted’
sources are co-workers, information from messaging
apps, my social media community.

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

Figure 19 ‘Somewhat trusted’ sources of information – Brazil

Figure 20 ‘Somewhat trusted’ sources of information – Russia

Figure 21 ‘Somewhat trusted’ sources of information – Turkey

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3.8 Layer 2 of the ‘pyramid model’: sources respondents ‘trust’
This pyramid layer of ‘trusted’ sources reveals again adifferent pattern across the entire sample and acrosscountries.
First of all, the role of co-workers, friends, and family
are scaled back, and national media emerge as ‘trusted’
sources, along with science and health experts by aconsiderable number of respondents.
Across the entire sample, newspapers rose as top sites of‘trusted’ sources (40.9%), followed by radio (39.9%), andtelevision (39.9%), educators (39.90%), and science andhealth experts (39.2%). The next set of ‘trusted’ sourceswere ‘top results on search sites’ (35.9%) and family (32.9%).
The trust in ‘top results on search sites’ also relates toearlier outcomes, where ‘search sites’ were highly ranked
when looking ‘first’ for COVID-19 information.
The WHO trust level gains momentum as well and the
WHO was ‘trusted’ by 32.5%, and ‘my government’ by
31.3% of respondents. In contrast, ‘my social media
community’ and ‘information and messaging apps’ ranked
considerable low (28% and 22.1%).
This pattern appears with some nuances across all three
age bands of respondents in this study. Even among 18–24
year olds, ‘trusted’ sources were national media, followedby science and health experts, and the WHO. Their social

media community, and information on messaging apps
ranked low as trusted sources. As has been outlined
earlier, they were mainly seen as ‘somewhat’ trusted
sources.
However, again, there were some national differences.
While, for example, in Brazil, we see ‘trust’ of a large
number of sources, and national media were at the
top rank, such as newspaper trusted by around 58% of
respondents and television trusted by 57%; in China, top
categories were national newspapers (55.1%), radio andalternative movement leaders (both 46%). In Colombia,
the two top ranked ‘trusted’ sources were newspapers,
radio and television and science and health experts. In
India, ‘educators’ were on top, followed by radio.
In Indonesia, radio ranked on top, with 46.5%, in anotherwise quite large universe of ‘trusted’ sources, as
shown in the graph below.
In contrast, in Italy, the list of trusted source was muchnarrower and centered on science and health experts andnewspapers.
In India, a majority of respondents said that they trust
national media, educators, search sites and their ‘social
media community; and ‘my government.’

Figure 22 ‘Trusted’ sources of information – Indonesia

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Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

Figure 23 ‘Trusted’ sources of information – Italy

Figure 24 ‘Trusted’ sources of information – India

3.9	Layer 3 of the ‘pyramid model’: sources respondents‘highly’ trust
When assessing ‘highly trusted’ sources there were firstof all clear peaks, and, second, these peaks remained
consistent across all countries.

When comparing across countries and age cohorts, theWHO and science and health experts continued to rank
on the top-two spaces.

Results reflect a clear crisis ‘signifier’ role of the WHO,
which respondents across all countries ‘highly’ trusted(45.4%), followed by ‘science and health experts’ (43.9%).
The next ranked ‘highly’ trusted source was family (22%)
and ‘my government’ (20%).

However, there are one national differences not changing
the high rank of ‘science and health experts’ and of theWHO but differences relate to other ‘highly’ trusted
sources. For example, in Argentina, the WHO ranked
second (29%); while science and health experts peaked,

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47

at 44.2%. Family ranked third, with 18.6%, and media
outlets ranked very low, under 10%, as well as ‘top results
on search sites’ (8%), ‘my social media community’ (4.8%),
and information from messaging apps, at only 3%. Coworkers who were highly ranked in layer 2 of the ‘pyramid’model ranked lower in the ‘somewhat’ trust category, rank
in consequence lower here and were only ‘highly’ trusted
by 2.7% of respondents from Argentina.
In comparison to Argentina, respondents from Brazil
ranked the WHO high (61%), followed by science andhealth experts (56%), and newspapers (22%). This slightdifference probably relates to different national media
cultures.
While the WHO ranked among the two top sites that were‘highly trusted,’ these two sources were in some countries,
such as China, combined with one other ‘highly’ trusted
source: ‘my government.’ As the graph below shows,
we see a different pattern in China, where respondents
ranked ‘my government’ third, with a substantial 48.5%
making this claim (see the graph below).
In contrast, in Indonesia, the WHO’s top rank (41.6%) andthe second rank of science and health experts (36.3%)
was followed with a significant number of respondents
who said they ‘highly’ trusted religious leaders (26.7%),
producing a different pattern of peaks, compared toArgentina and China.
An exception to the top roles were the results from
Russian respondents. The WHO was ranked on top of‘highly trusted’ sources (18.4%), The same rank as the
WHO was occupied by ‘family’ (18.4%) and ‘science andhealth’ experts (15.6%). Other sources ranked below
10%. This outcome could reflect a source environment
where respondents mainly ‘trust’ information sources, but
overall, were reluctant to ‘highly’ trust.

In Japan, as in South Korea, we also see different patterns,
where the WHO was ranked first, but a relatively long listof sources were also ‘highly’ trusted. See the graph below.
In other countries, the pattern clearly reveals a peak of
the WHO and ‘science and health’ experts, with othersources ranking much lower. These outcomes, and thehigh rank of the WHO and of science and health experts
across all countries, reveals an interesting phenomenon.
While in earlier decades, such a high rank would havebeen obtained by national media, however, among young
adults across the 24 countries these have some status inlayers 2 (‘trusted’) and 3 (‘somewhat trusted’).
However, when it came to ‘highly trusted’ COVID-19
content, most respondents clearly preferred crisis
information directly from the WHO. The fact that this is aphenomenon across all 24 countries reveals a clear crisis
definition status or a crisis signifier role of the WHO, which
is, as the examples above indicate, sometimes mixed withother sources.
This signifier role requires further attention in the way
it relates to the perception of other sources. The study
results reveal some mistrust in national media, whichis addressed in Section 4 of this report, and an overall
skeptical sentiment regarding crisis information. Thesesentiments could be related to the high trust in the WHO
as a crisis signifier, the content that is provided, and theinteraction that is possible on WHO’s social media sites.
Respondents might compare and contrast content they
access from the WHO site to what they see on national
television, with a potential outcome that they felt they
do not get ‘the whole picture’ on national media, causing
some skepticism and perhaps the ranking of traditional
media not as ‘highly trusted’ but – in some countries – as‘trusted’ or ‘somewhat trusted’ sources.

Figure 25 ‘Highly trusted’ sources of information – Argentina

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Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

Figure 26 ‘Highly trusted’ sources of information – China

Figure 27 ‘Highly trusted’ sources of information – Indonesia

Figure 28 ‘Highly trusted’ sources of information – South Korea

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3.10 Relevance of search sites
Our study shows that search sites take on important roles.
These are used to obtain additional information or tosearch for information about individual concerns.
Results from the entire sample to the question ‘For
COVID-19 news information and updates to which of
the following sources do you go first?’ to get first insight
into crisis developments show many respondents checknational media (43%) before using search sites (36%).
There are no significant differences concerning thisranking across the three age cohorts included in thisstudy.
In most countries, search sites were among the top-fiveinformation sources. In Egypt ‘actively’ searching is evenon the top spot (44%) when asked where they go ‘first’ to
get COVID-19 news information and updates, followed bysocial media content by the WHO (39.2%). Respondents
from Indonesia also ranked ‘actively searching using
search sites’ as their first choice (41.7%) when asked ‘For
COVID-19 news information and updates to which of thefollowing sources do you go first?.’ This preference wasfollowed ‘my social media,’ by ‘my government’ (39.5%),and ‘social media content by the WHO’ (34.9). Mexico was
one of the few countries where actively searching was
only on rank seven.
Respondents from Russia also ranked ‘actively searching
on search sites’ on top of the sources respondents went
to obtain first updates (38.1%), followed by family (32.7%),
and national news media (30.6%).
Actively searching ‘using search sites’ for COVID-19
information took on a significant role. In some countries
it was as significant as WHO’s social media content; forexample, in Turkey. In other countries, actively searching
was ranked – in some cases only slightly – higher thanWHO’s social media content, such as in South Africa, Brazil,
Egypt, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Morocco, theUK, and the US.

Figure 29 ‘Highly trusted’ sources of information – Argentina

This spider web indicates two dimensions where respondents went first for COVID-19 information. The red line indicates therole of search sites and the blue line the role of the WHO content.

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Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

3.11 National insight: Indonesia
Indonesia is one of the world’s youngest countries, with68 million youths aged 10–24 years. It is often argued
that Indonesia has one of the largest digital populations
worldwide. For this reason, it is important to gain anational snapshot of the way how respondents fromIndonesia practise COVID-19 crisis interaction.
Respondents across all age bands in Indonesia said thatthey ‘highly trust’ the WHO (41.6%), followed by ‘scienceand health experts’ (36%), and ‘religious leaders’ (26.7%)
and family (25.9%). It is often argued that social media
users in Indonesia are very active, spending more than
three hours a day on social media. Yet, social media
communities and information from messaging apps wereat the very end of their list of highly trusted sources.
Among 18–24 year old respondents, the WHO ranged on
top of their ‘highly’ trusted sources (47%), as compared
to 41% among 25–29 year olds, and 37% of 30–40 years.
However, given the large Muslim population in Indonesia,
it is not surprising that religious leaders were seen – by all
age bands in a similar way – as a ‘highly’ trusted source.
While these were the ‘highly trusted’ sources, and it could
be argued that these might be used to double check andcontrast crisis content, respondents basically said thatthey ‘trust’ a large number of sites, meaning that thesesites also produced important content. The very different
ranking of sources in the question about which sources
they said that they ‘highly’ trust and ‘trust’ indicates aclear understanding of the different validity and, perhaps,
legitimacy of these sources.

When it came to sources which they said that they just‘trust,’ the sources on top of this list were ‘science andhealth experts’ (47%), educators (45%), radio (45%),
television (42%), newspapers (42%), the WHO (39%), and‘religious leaders’ (38%). Social media communities weretrusted by 36%, as were ‘information from messaging
apps.’ This is a mix and match of very different sites, whichmight even produce contradictory messages.
It seems that Indonesian respondents navigate across
a complex and perhaps even somewhat contradictory
information environment: between science information,‘neutral’ sources, such as the WHO and religious leaders.
We could argue that the challenges of such a polarized
information environment, including the WHO, as well as
religious leaders, produces a fog of vague skepticism anduncertainties – at the height of the pandemic in Indonesia
when this survey was conducted. For example, 26% said
that they ‘strongly’ believed that COVID-19 content isbiased, and 24% felt that ‘social distancing and hygiene
directives are not really necessary.’ They also had a vague
set of concerns; for example, ‘I feel my government is notdoing enough to control the pandemic’ (32%), I feel ‘mygovernment is overreacting when it comes to COVID-19’(32%). Unsurprisingly, 29% said that they have stopped
paying attention to COID-19 information, while 28% of
respondents said that they ‘somewhat agree’ that theirgovernment is ‘not giving me the full picture’ and 32%
stated that ‘all information on social media is the same
to me.’

3.12 Takeaway
This section reveals the different strategies to break out ofthe ‘filter bubble’ of social media communities in contextsof health crisis communication. The pyramid model of
information-seeking behavior shows three importantlayers and an insight into information sources which
are not trusted. Respondents ranked information andmessaging apps and their own social media community
quite low in this list and considered the WHO and science
information as the highest trusted sources, with somedistance to other source ranks. This reveals a new roleof the WHO for this age group (18–40 year olds). The‘pyramid’ model could provide a guideline for these crisis
communication strategies.

Individuals navigate and manoeuvre across a multiple
source universe. However, they do not come acrossinformation incidentally, but are active, search actively,
visit sites, and know exactly who they can trust in a crisis.
This opens up a new dimension of active crisis interaction
which relates to all countries. Respondents from low- andmiddle-incomes reflect a similar sentiment to their peers
in high-income regions. While a digital divide still exists
for low- and middle-income groups, the number of those
who have access to mobile smart phones is significantly
increasing, which makes it necessary to adopt a newperspective. We need to move beyond the traditional
digital divide debates, to assess new divides relating toSocial media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

51

young adults in low- and middle- income countries. These
new divides arising in contexts of smart mobile devices
relate to the regulation of privacy and data protection, forexample.
The high rank of actively searching for COVID-19 content‘using search sites’ is an interesting outcome of our study.
Although respondents seem to be slightly skepticalregarding the quality of top results and potentially awareof the algorithmic ranking procedure, search platforms
still provide significant information when checking local
outbreaks, identifying information relating to individual
concerns, and understanding the larger issues. However,in the public debate, Google platforms are mainly in focus
regarding ranking procedures in a crisis. Other platforms,
for example smaller but sometimes thematic specific‘splinter’ search platforms are sidelined; however, they
could potentially also take up key roles in informationseeking.

Despite the use of search platforms as a key information
tool in the COVID-19 crisis, search platform information
requires further attention regarding debates of platform
regulation. A recent study revealed that when entering
the word ‘coronavirus’ on major search platforms, reveals
gaps and discrepancies in the presentation of searchoutcomes (Makhortykh et al, 202022). The authors argue
that different users are exposed to different results.
Furthermore, the lack of transparency of the algorithmic
setting in a global crisis situation is an issue. While Google
has addressed some of these issues, smaller platforms
with equally important information roles are less in the
public spotlight. A digital policy debate is required to
identify consistent guidelines across large and small
search platforms.

22 Makhortykh, M, Ulman, A, Ulloa, R (2020) ‘How search engines disseminate information about COVID-19 and why they should do better,’Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review 1 (4).

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Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

4

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

THE AWARENESS OF
MIS- AND DISINFORMATION

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The spread of mis- and disinformation has emerged
as a key phenomenon during the COVID-19 pandemic
across all world regions. However, the phenomenon itself
is not new. Rumours, myths, and falsified information
have also been produced, for example, by national
media for decades. The difference to today’s mis- anddisinformation universe is that in those decades, falsified
information was quickly detected by the large national
audience of mainstream ‘mass’ media. Once an issue waspublicly detected and caused a public scandal, media
organizations were often forced to correct the news item
and to acknowledge the mistake. In the context of social
media and other digital platforms, it is very difficult to
identify misinformation.
Especially the larger social media platforms experimentwith various strategies, from setting an algorithmic filter toprevent falsified crisis information to be posted, to settinga mechanism detecting posted material, to warnings thatmaterial is false. In addition, some governments makeplatforms responsible for spreading false information.23

Despite these measures, it is still possible to spread mis/disinformation regarding vaccines and health restrictions
across social media platforms. The platform infrastructureof social media is simply too complex. Deep looping ofadvanced individual search levels, for example, when
repeatedly clicking on search results to dive deeper into
more and more advanced levels of increasing content
nuances, make it very difficult for platforms to track deep
false content. In addition, the fact that it is possible totarget specific user profiles with mis- and disinformation tomatch their values, interests, and perspectives, who thenfurther forward this content to peers across their different
platform communities, creates massive challenges forsocial platforms when aiming to identify and track false
crisis content. While the original content might have been
deleted, content that has reached into other platforms
for example, platforms beyond the Facebook platforms –with a less rigid mis/disinformation policy might still beavailable.

4.1 Background
Despite the massive role of falsified information during
the COVID-19 pandemic, a universal definition of misand disinformation or ‘fake’ news does not exist. For
example, it is suggested that ‘fake’ news can be defined
as intentionally fabricated content ‘regardless of theirauthor’s ultimate intention’ while the term ‘distorted’ news
is seen as a ‘more subtle form of information,’ aiming ‘toinfluence or manipulate people’s beliefs and behavior’(Neuwirth, 202124). Terms such as ‘misinformation’ arebroadly defined as producing false content without thenecessary intention to manipulate. In addition, the term
‘disinformation’ and ‘hoax’ signify an active process ofdeliberately producing false content that, for example,
is not based on widely acknowledged scientific facts
which constitute the normative guidelines for nationallylegitimate responses in a heath crisis.
Despite these different terminologies and definitions,
there are other dimensions to what is commonly
addressed as ‘fake’ news which require attention. For
example, the process of algorithmic content selection bysocial media and other digital platforms (such as searchplatforms) which set a user’s individual content filters isstill today a major challenge. This content filter is set wheneven signing up to a new platform conveniently using
individual sign-in to link up to already used platforms(such as using the Facebook sign-in to various content
platforms). This also means that individual parametertransition to other platforms.
Once an individual actively engages in misinformation,
similar content is likely to be algorithmically selected andshared. This process could create over time an individual
information ‘circuit’ with more and more content of asimilar type to be displayed and presented, which theneven further increases the exposure to falsified crisis
content, based on algorithmic filtering. So for example,
when searching on YouTube for clips on ‘Covid is not true’(avoiding words like ‘vaccination’ or conspiracy whichmight be picked up by the ‘fake’ news filer) reveals a firstlist of clips which are critical about conspiracy theories.
However, when diving deeper to the next search level byclicking on a clip on ‘The real truth about corona virus’ alist of other clips is displayed with titles like ‘They’re lying
to us.’ In addition to watching the clip, users comment andshare their opinions on the broader COVID conspiracy.

23 For example, the US Surgeon General’s Advisory on Building a Health Information Environment suggests an action guideline for the US

government, but also governments internationally to tackle misinformation at the time of a health crisis. The report is called Confronting
Health Misinformation, 2021.
24 Neuwirth, R (2021) ‘The Global Regulation of “Fake News” in the Time of Oxymora: Facts and Fictions about the COVID-19 Pandemic as
Coincidences or Predictive Programming?’ International Journal of Semiotics of Law.

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Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

This example reveals that while platforms, such as
YouTube make efforts to delete mis- and disinformation,
there are still instances when anti science and anti-vaccine
content is still displayed. Falsified information is not only
posted on social media platforms by users but also by bots
–automated producers of interaction which – as ‘chatbots’– mimic human users and are difficult to identify.
However, when addressing falsified information anotherissue is of relevance as well: the broad availability ofvarious technologies which make it very easy for almost
anyone to manipulate videos – to produce, for example,
fake and distorting interviews with policymakers andcelebrities via artificial intelligence tools of facial mapping
and voice manipulation and to create videos that appear
to be genuine, but are in fact ‘deep fakes.’ Producing
anti science virus content is already easy and will only
expand in the future. These are the new dimensions offake news and misinformation which are also elements ofthe globalized interactive crisis universe of the COVID-19
pandemic and require some attention.
Overall, false information and conspiracy theories
influence opinions about the severity of the crisis andperceptions about the need to follow restrictions but also
spread doubts about national crisis responses. As can beobserved across continents, mis- and disinformation isalready fracturing societies at the crucial point of a critical
health crisis, where in fact nationally consistent responses
are required.

In some countries, false information mobilizes protests
on a regular basis to oppose restrictions wearing masks,
maintaining social distance, and following lockdowns. For
example, protesters believe in conspiracy theories suchas in the role of 5G mobile phone signals and microchips
in transmitting the virus. This belief has led to attacks ofphone masts in Bolivia where protesters pulled down
antennas. A former public figure from Nigeria shared avideo on his Facebook site which claims that the so-called
pandemic is a cover-up for serious medical conditions
people pick up from 5G and not from a virus. In the UK,
5G antennas were destroyed. Anti-vaccination activism
spreads across the world as social media disseminate
videos of protests. Mis- and disinformation also includes
the promotion of falsified cures. For example, a public
figure from Madagascar promotes a herbal drink as atreatment for coronavirus in a social media video which
has the potential to reach Corona skeptics across theworld.
Various studies address the way how ‘fake’ news is perceived
by social media users. For example, a study relating to the
US argues that the educational background which hasoften been viewed as a filter when assessing individuals’
information behavior does not play a role in context of‘fake’ news. The authors note that ‘digital media, morethan others, appeared as disseminating considerable
fake news in the first phases of the pandemic, making it
more difficult for even the highly educated segments ofthe population to be correctly informed in the short termin an uncertain information environment’ (Gerosa et al.,2021: 221225).

4.2	It is not only mis- and disinformation – but a climate ofskepticism and being overwhelmed
It would be too simplistic to mainly focus on debates
about manipulated content alone. Our data showsthat Millennials and Generation Z respondents in 24
countries adopt a critical perspective not only of mis- anddisinformation, but regarding the overall opinion climateof COVID-19.
A large group of respondents across all age cohorts andall world regions articulated a vague feeling of doubt,
mistrust and skepticism regarding COVID-19 content.
This skepticism does not relate to conspiracy content but
they feel a sense of ambiguity where all information is ‘thesame.’ This overall feeling of skepticism might explain why
the WHO and the neutral information of scientists was
ranked so highly as key sources that were ‘highly’ trusted(see Section 3, the information ‘pyramid’). This sense ofskepticism reflects in fact a significant degree of digital
literacy, a critical perception of social media platforms
in a heightened health crisis among the Millennials andGeneration Z respondents of our study.
Consequently, they navigate around their individual
social media loops and break out of their algorithmic
filter bubbles. This sense of skepticism and the relianceon science experts and the WHO as neutral sources may
be a direct consequence of their extensive experienceengaging with the complexity of their individual multisource environment, ranging from all kinds of digitalsources to national media and various digital content
sites.

25 Gerosa, T., Gui, M., Hargittai, E., Nguyen, M.H. (2021) ‘(Mis)Informed During COVID-19: How Education Level and Information Sources
Contribute to Knowledge Gaps,’ International Journal of Communication, 15.

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Figure 30 I feel overwhelmed by the amount of information on COVID-19

Our study shows that there is a trend to contrast andcompare COVID-19 information. While contrasting andcomparing reveals significant digital literacy this might –at the same time – also leave a sense of an ambiguous
information environment. Consequently, a large group of
respondents across all countries said that they ‘strongly
agree’ and ‘somewhat agree’ that they felt overwhelmedby the amount of information.
We asked respondents ‘How strongly do you or disagreewith the following statements, when it comes to COVID-19?’
and were presented twelve statements. Figure 30 shows
the nuanced sentiment of agreement across all countries.
Combining the categories of ‘strongly agree’ and‘somewhat agree’ regarding the feeling of being
overwhelmed by the amount of information on COVID-19
suggests a sense of an ambiguous COVID-19 information
climate across most countries (with the lowest percentageof respondents with this sentiment in Australia, China,
and Sweden). Those who said that they ‘strongly agree’ tofeeling overwhelmed were from the Philippines (31.9%),
France (30.5%), Colombia (30.1%), India (30%), and Turkey(30%).

56

A large group across all countries expressed a feelingof being ‘somewhat’ overwhelmed, which might
equally contribute to a feeling of ambiguity. This does
not necessarily relate to the phenomena of mis- anddisinformation; but rather to the fact that too muchinformation is available, that it is not clear where sourcescome from and orientation is difficult. It could be argued
that this vague feeling of an information bubble iscaused by a multi-source environment of Millennials andGeneration Z where content is fluid: always available,
always updated and providing all types of perspectives.
When combining the responses ‘strongly agree’ and‘somewhat agree’ to being ‘overwhelmed’ reveals that
68% of respondents from Egypt, Morocco, and India
said that they felt this way, 66% from Nigeria, 65% fromSouth Korea, 63% from the Philippines and from Turkey,
57% from Brazil, 62% from France, 61% from Spain, 61%from UK, 58% from Japan, 56% from Italy, 55% from theUS, 54% from Indonesia and Russia, and 52% from South
Africa. Those with the lowest sense of being overwhelmed
combining the ‘strongly agree’ and ‘somewhat agree’
response categories were from Australia (46%), Sweden(40%) and China (32.4%).

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

Figure 31 I feel the media is not telling me everything

When asked to comment how they felt about thestatement ‘I feel the media is not telling me everything’,
we also see a large proportion of skepticism and doubt
regarding media sources. This sentiment clearly reflects
the key points made in Section 3 where national media
are used; however, a clear majority across all 24 countries
said that they mainly ‘highly’ trusted the WHO and scienceand health experts. A large proportion may not havedoubted the legitimacy of information produced by the
media, but may have contrasted and compared COVID-19
information across different sources. Thus, respondents
might have felt that the media were not providing specificangles covered elsewhere, such as by the social media
sites of the WHO, and hence, felt that ‘the media is not
telling me everything.’
This doubt regarding media COVID-19 information isreflected in responses across different types of national
media structures: from those countries with a public
service media tradition and the notion of the media as
critical fourth estate, to countries where governments
monitor media. Respondents from countries with a public
service tradition said that they felt that there was more to
the crisis than they were told by the media. For example,

35.9% of respondents from France said that they ‘strongly’agreed with this statement; however, only relatively few
from other European public service media countries, suchas Spain (21.4%), Sweden (14%) and Italy (12.45).
It was not only the feeling of being overwhelmed and thatthe media do not tell the whole story, but respondents
also felt to a large extent that crisis content is biased. As
the chart below (Figure 32) shows, there was a substantial
group in each world regions that felt agreed ‘strongly’ and‘somewhat’ that COVID-19 content is biased.
Comparing respondents who noted that they ‘strongly’agreed that COVID-19 content is biased reveals that thisfeeling was especially strong in Turkey (40.8%), followedby Nigeria (39.5%), France (35.9%), and Brazil (34.1%).
Adding those who ‘strongly’ agree and ‘somewhat’ agree
that COVID-19 content is biased, shows that in Egypt
72.6% of respondents felt this way, in Turkey 69.6%, in
Morocco 68.6%, in India 68.5%, and in South Korea 67.2%.
The set of countries where slightly less, but still a
considerable number of respondents also felt a probabilityof biased content were Nigeria (64.7%), Peru (64.5%),
Colombia (63%), Spain (62,9%), France (62.8%), Japan

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57

Figure 32 I believe that COVID-19 content is biased(61.4%), and Philippines (60.6%). The countries where
respondents agreed less that COVID-19 content is biased
were China (43.8%) and Sweden (36.9%).
Because the survey did not ask for the reasons for thesentiment why they believe that COVID-19 content isbiased, it is difficult to interpret these outcomes. Given
the large diversity of countries where respondents have aconsiderable feeling of biased content, some reasons forthis feeling could be related to specific local information
contexts, which are very different in France and in Turkey.
The overall perception of the COVID-19 information
ecology, for example, the multiple sources available where
information feels ‘the same,’ could also be a reason. Bothreasons clearly relate to the fact that most respondents
said that they highly trusted the WHO and science andhealth experts (see Section 3).
In addition to these nuanced sentiments concerningpotentially biased COVID-19 information, the graphabove also reflects that a relatively large group of
respondents displays a notion of indifference, which could
be interpreted as a strategy to cope with the potentiallyperceived ‘same’/’same’ of crisis information. This is not
surprising, given the extended duration of the pandemic
58

and the continuous crisis mode, which also constitutes
significant challenges for journalists when addressing thedifferent peaks of the crisis over such an extended periodof time.
Another statement following the question, ‘How strongly
do you agree or disagree with the following statements,
when it comes to COVID-19?’ asked for their degree ofagreement to the statement ‘I stopped paying attention tonews and information on COVID-19 in general.’ Outcomesindicate a feeling of information fatigue, reflected by thesignificant number of responses who said that they ‘highly
agree’ and ‘somewhat agree’ to having ‘stopped paying
attention.’ Combining these numbers with the earlier
chart displaying results of the feeling that COVID-19
information is biased and that media are not telling thefull picture, reveals the significant number of respondents
adopting a sense of skepticism when engaging with
COVID-19 information. In this sense, these notions ofskepticism and doubt, indicate that to discuss only misand disinformation in public debates is too simplistic.
Our survey indicates that respondents were critical,
skeptical, and doubtful, and were very nuanced in theirperceptions. They were also aware of key sources in a

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

Figure 33 I stopped paying attention to news and information on COVID-19 in general

health crisis, and the high ranking of science and healthexperts. The fact that the WHO is seen as a ‘highly trusted’
source indicates the competence needed to overcome thesense of ambiguity within their broad information ecology
by obtaining neutral information. It could be argued thatthey then use this neutral information to contrast andcompare with the content produced by other information
sources, and thereby reach a sense of doubt.

for Sweden and Italy – where the combined percentage
reached 36% and 26%.
Respondents not only expressed severe skepticism
concerning media and the overall information ecology,
but also relatively large groups said that they doubted that
their government does not present ‘the whole picture’ ofcrisis issues.

Based on these results, it is not surprising that respondents
felt crisis fatigue and just stopped paying attention. The
question, ‘How strongly do you agree or disagree with thefollowing statements, when it comes to COVID-19?’ asked
for their nuanced agreement to the statement, ‘I stopped
paying attention to news and information on COVID-19
in general.’ Respondents from all types of national media
cultures seemed to have dropped out of the information
cycle. Respondents from Nigeria (38.5%), Brazil (34.1%),
South Africa (31.4%), Spain (30.9%), and Peru (29.2%)
agreed ‘strongly’ to no longer paying attention (Figure 33).

Governments constitute an additional layer in themultiple-source environment, because they conduct press
briefings, and many governments also communicate
updated news and guidelines for restrictions also on
social media. Similarly, regarding the perception of a
relatively large groups of respondents who felt that media
are biased in their COVID-19 coverage, when asked if theyfelt that their government is providing the full picture
reveals a significant amount of doubt, suspicion, andreservation. ‘Strongly agree’ and ‘somewhat agree,’ wasespecially expressed by respondents from Turkey (67%),
Nigeria (66%), Egypt, (64%), France (63%).

However, groups who felt a vague sense of dropping outof the information loop were quite large. Combining thosewho ‘strongly’ and ‘somewhat’ agreed reveals a significant
group of respondents across most countries – except

This sentiment constitutes another dimension in the larger
perception of an ambiguous information environment ofmany respondents. The fact that a relatively large group

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

59

Figure 34 I feel like my government is not giving me the full picture when it comes to COVID-19

either ‘strongly’ or ‘somewhat’ agreed to the opinion
that ‘my government is not giving me the full picture’
reflects a further dimension that contributes to the senseof skepticism and ambiguity. Within this environment,
respondents seemed to access multiple sources, but also
to compare and contrast, which does not produce moreinsight, but perhaps an increased feeling of detachment
and that ‘everything is the same.’
Based on these results, it could be argued that large
groups of respondents perceive the overall information
environment as biased, and they stopped paying
attention. These results also resonate with outcomes of
the responses to which sources they trust which revealed
that many only highly trust the WHO and scientists, which
they seem to perceive as a neutral source.
The perception of skepticism and doubt was also expressed
towards social media. The question, ‘How strongly do you
agree or disagree with the following statements’ asked
for various general sentiments regarding COVID-19.
The question asked for the degree of agreements, forexample, to the statement, ‘All information on social media
is the same to me.’60

While respondents said that they heavily used platforms(see Section 1), when it came to their ‘highly’ trust in social
media regarding COVID-19 information, as discussed in
Section 2, results reveal that social media ranked relatively
low. The sentiment of social media as an ambiguous
information ecology is reflected in the graph (Figure 35)
below.
Assessing respondents who ‘strongly’ agree to thestatement that ‘all information on social media is thesame to me’ reveals that a high percentage were from
Nigeria (37.7%), followed by respondents from Brazil(33.9%). Respondents from other countries said that theyfelt ‘somewhat’ that this was the case; for example, a large
group of respondents agreed ‘somewhat’ from Egypt(43%) and Morocco (36%). Combining those who ‘strongly’
and ‘somewhat’ agree reveals that this perception was
only shared by very smalls groups: Sweden (34%) and Italy(17%).

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

Figure 35 All information on social media is the same to me

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

61

Taylor Henderson, University of Melbourne

Deep insight: Australia and fake news

In the wake of a summer of devastating bushfires andthe outbreak of COVID-19, Australia’s demand for crisis
communication surged in 2020.
As noted by the Australia Pacific lead for global
fact-checking Anne Kruger, this fear-induced
scramble for information created the perfectconditions for mis/disinformation to spread.26

Map allegedly showing where Wuhan
residents have gone

The dissemination of fake news relating to the
COVID-19 pandemic in Australia has not been
limited to fringe actors or social media platforms.
Early in the pandemic, mainstream morning show
Channel 7’s Sunrise featured a graphic allegedly
representing the flight patterns of Chinese
nationals from Wuhan following the 2020 Lunar
New Year (see above picture). In fact, the image
was a depiction of global air traffic from 2010
which had gone viral on social media and clearly
not been properly fact checked.
Potentially dangerous racist content relating
to the pandemic has also been shared on social
media by users impersonating traditional media
organizations or governmental departments. In
January 2020, a media release supposedly sharedby a state health department issued a ‘Level 3
health warning’ advising against non-essential
travel to Wuhan and several local suburbs
known for having higher Chinese-Australian
populations. Further, a social media post claiming
to be on behalf of the ‘Department of Diseasology
Paramatta’ (Paramatta is a suburb of Sydney,

Photo: Getty Images
26 h ttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-19/coronavirus-fake-news-how-to-fight-it/12467194

62

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

Australia) went viral after claiming that certain
foods imported from China, including noodles,
fortune cookies, and Chinese Red Bull, included
traces of the virus.27
As evident across the world, online COVID-19
racism has had very real effects on Asian
Australians. In a recent study, more than 80% of
Asian Australian respondents reported having
experienced COVID-19 related discrimination,28
and there have been several instances of physicaland verbal abuse, as well as racist property
damage since the outbreak.29
While Australian participants overall selectednational newspapers television and radio as
their first source of information regarding the
pandemic, this was not the case for both 18–24
year olds and 25–29 year olds, who were most
likely to actively search for information. Thesefindings support existing national research andscholarship suggesting that younger Australians
are shifting away from traditional media
autonomously seeking public health information,rather than allowing it to be brought to them by
way of nightly news, daily newspaper, or hourly
radio bulletins.
In addition to lockdown measures (including oneof the longest and strictest in the world in Victoria)
and the introduction of the COVIDSafe app, theAustralian federal and state governments haveaddressed the pandemic by introducing and/or ramping up several digital means of crisis
communication. This includes live streamingof press releases at the state and federal levels,the enlistment of influencers to promote publichealth initiatives, text messaging,30 a dedicated‘myth busting’ website,31 and an ad aired acrosstraditional and digital media platforms entitled‘how the virus spreads’ aimed specifically at young
people.32

Australian NSW advertisement
Recognising that 18–35 year old Australians
are most likely to contract COVID-19, one state
government health department took to Twitter to
ask young people to share videos of themselves
getting tested for COVID-19 using the hashtag#Itest4NSW.
Several hashtags also emerged in response to
growing frustrations with the Victorian State
Government’s handling of Australia’s mostsignificant second wave of COVID-19; specificallythe Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. As
noted by Graham and others, the hashtag
campaigns #IStandwithDan, #DictatorDan and#Danliedpeopledied, demonstrate not only thegrowing tensions and polarities associated withthe lockdown, but also the capacity of social
media campaigns to progress political agendas.33
Finally, while not a governmental response,
another national response to fake news during
the pandemic is Australian telecommunications
company Telstra’s use of local comedian Mark
Humphries to address myths surrounding aconnection between 5G and coronavirus.34 While
there is an obvious underlying vested interest in
this project, it demonstrates the capacity of theprivate sector to harness their influence for public
good in times of crisis.

27 h ttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7940461/Australians-warned-not-fall-HOAX-coronavirus-health-notice.html
28 h ttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-02/asian-australians-suffer-covid-19-discrimination-anu-survey/12834324
29 h ttps://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/the-toxic-spread-of-covid-19-racism
30 h ttps://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-greg-hunt-mp/media/australian-government-text-message-regarding-coronavirus-

prevention-steps
31 https://www.australia.gov.au/covid-19-mythbusting
32 https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-greg-hunt-mp/media/how-the-virus-spreads-new-ad-targets-young-australians-in-covid19-response
33 h ttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1329878X20981780
34 https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2020/08/11/why-are-young-men-more-likely-to-believe-covid-19-myths.html

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

634.3 The perception of fake news
The perception and interaction with fake news is not
isolated, but rather should be seen in the context of theperception of the COVID-19 information environment.
This is a – to some extent – ambiguous information
sphere. It seems only ‘logical’ that respondents are fully
aware of mis- and disinformation.
The majority of respondents (59%) across all 24 countries
said that they were very aware of fake news: 33% were‘somewhat aware;’ however, 5% were unaware and an
even smaller proportion ‘does not care whether content
is real or fake.’ This result aligns with the critical reflectionof the broader ‘diffuse’ information environment. Not only
were large proportions of respondents critical regarding
media, felt that all information on even social media ‘is thesame’ but a large majority of the overall sample were fully
aware of misinformation, falsified content and fake news.
Results of our study do not reflect a difference in theawareness of fake news regarding socio-economic
background or age cohort; however, there are somenational differences. For example, assessing the
proportion of those countries where more than 50%
stated that they were ‘very aware’ of fake news reveals
a list of nineteen countries of the 24 countries included.
This is an impressive result and clearly further supports
the argument made earlier that respondents have asignificant degree of digital literacy. The countries withmore than 50% of respondents stating that they are ‘very
aware’ of fake news are Brazil (84%), France (77%), South
Africa (75%), Colombia (74%), Mexico (74%), Argentina(74%), Peru (73%), Nigeria (73%) India (72%), Spain (66%),
US (66%), Italy (64%), Turkey (60%), Sweden (58%), South
Korea (55%), Philippines (54%), Russia (53%), UK (52%),and Egypt (51%).
The countries with a smaller proportion making thisstatement were Australia (50%), Morocco (45%),
Philippines (39%), Japan (35.6%), China (33%), and South
Korea (32%).
The country with the smallest proportion of respondents
feeling ‘very aware’ were from Indonesia (13%), however,
58% were ‘somewhat aware,’ to a relatively large groupof 24% was ‘unaware of fake news’ and 4% did ‘not care
whether content is real or fake.’
However, the definition of what mis- and disinformation
are, might be very different in local perspectives in each ofthese countries. We did not ask this question, but it could
be argued that in some countries fake news and falsified
COVID-19 content is not only produced by conspiracy
theorists, but also by public actors.

64

Source: Shona Gosh/Twitter
Example of false Twitter messaging
Assessing the three age cohorts included in this study
reveals that there was only a 1% difference between
the three age cohorts: 18–24, 25–29, and 30–40 years
concerning issues around fake news. This result also
further supports the thesis of a crisis information literate
generation.
The overall significant degree of digital literacy regarding
the awareness of ‘fake’ news is also reflected in the small
number of respondents who ‘never’ ensure that content
is correct. When we addressed their own digital behavior
and asked, ‘Do you make sure that information is correct
before sharing?,’ results reflect that only a very small
proportion of respondents per country (that is, under
10%) said that they ‘never’ ensured that information wascorrect before sharing. The largest number of ‘neverensuring that information was correct before sharing’
was from Japan where 6% and from Russia where 5% of
respondents made this statement. The lowest number inthis category was by respondents from the US, with 0.8%.
When asked if respondents ‘ever’ shared content that they
later found to be incorrect, this was not the case for 42%of the overall sample across the 24 countries. The country
with the largest proportion of those who answered ‘yes’
was from South Korea, at 55.8%. However, when asked
if this content was corrected, the majority, between 80–
95% across most countries corrected this content. This
figure was slightly lower among respondents from Russia,
at 70%.
Responses to the question, ‘How do you react to
COVID-19 information – shared by others on social
media/messaging apps – that you know is false?’ showsthat 35% of the overall sample said that they ignored thecontent, 25% reported the content, 19% commented on
the content, 8.6% unfollowed the person and 7% shared
the content while 5% ‘do not know.’
However, comparing responses across countries reveals
that in some countries, such as France, the majority felt
‘somewhat’ concerned.

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

Comparing this chart to India (Figure 37) reveals a large
difference, as 37.2% reported the content and only 14.1%
ignored the content.
While a large group of respondents from India reported
false content, this was not the case for a large group of
respondents from Nigeria where 40% stated that they‘ignore the content’ and 28% said they commented on
the content. Although in India a large group reported
false information when shared by others, there was also a
relatively large group who shared the content further (11%).
In contrast, 40% of respondents from Nigeria ignored
false COVID-19 information being shared and 29.8%
commented on this content while only 19% reported thisfalse information.
While these questions relate to awareness it is alsointeresting to ask for their degree of concern regarding
fake news at the time of a global health crisis. We asked
the question ‘Overall, how do you feel about the existenceof “fake” information regarding COVID-19 on social

media/messaging apps?’ Across the entire sample, 43%of respondents were ‘very concerned’ and 39.4% were‘somewhat concerned,’ 10.3% were ‘not concerned’ and avery small percentage said that they ‘find it interesting.’
These results reveal a broad concern. However, thefact that a relative large proportion of 39.4% was only
‘somewhat’ concerned does not necessarily mean that thisgroup does not sufficiently care about correct information.
Based on earlier results which attest a significant levelof digital literacy, the fact that 39.4% stated to be only
‘somewhat’ concerned could also mean that they wereable to navigate around misinformation. However, there
were also national differences. While a relatively large
number of respondents from Brazil was not only aware
but were also ‘very concerned’ (61%), the majority of
respondents, for example, from Australia and China was
only ‘somewhat concerned’ (44% in Australia and 54% in
China). Overall, national nuances might also relate to theway how social media flag fake news in various countries
and to the way how misinformation is an issue of national
public debate.

Figure 36 Country results about fake news sharing: France

Figure 37 Country results about fake news sharing: India

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

65Figure 38 Country results about fake news sharing: Nigeria

Figure 39 Country results about fake news sharing: Russia

Figure 40 Country results about fake news sharing: South Korea

66

Social media and COVID-19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials

4.4 Takeaway
Fake news is an issue in normal times, However, in timesof a global pandemic, the spread of mis/disinformation
can have serious consequences. This study reveals that
it would be too simplistic only to focus on fake news. The
participants responded with a broad sense of skepticism
and doubt, and evidenced a perception of ambiguity
when it came to COVID-19 information. The responses
to the awareness of fake news need to be related to thisbroader sense of skepticism.

The OECD has also released a policy brief outlining four
key actions that governments platforms should take tocombat the spread of mis/disinformation regarding the
pandemic:

Outcomes also show that the three generations includedin this survey were digitally literate. They knew how
to break out of their filter bubbles, search for neutral
information and navigate across their broader multiple
source environment. They were active information seeker
and not passive receivers.
These outcomes are a positive result; however, when it
came to the recognition of fake news and misinformation,
there were still instances when false information cannot
be recognized; for example, when produced by trolls
and interactive bots or fake sources. For this reason,
it is important to develop sustainable digital policy
approaches. While platforms are required in somecountries to manage fake news, delete, and flag, forexample, this is not enough –especially in a crisis.
Current digital policy approaches have a more general
focus on the COVID-19 pandemic and new debates
surrounding the roles and responsibilities of social
media platforms in a global health crisis. As establishedin a 2021 UNESCO report, more than 40 countries havelaunched legislative initiatives intended to regulate digitalcontent. International organizations and other relevant
stakeholders have called for and implemented morerobust regulatory measures. For example, recognizing thepotential of – again in general terms – mis/disinformation
to put the health, security, and environment of citizens at
risk, the European Commission has introduced several
initiatives, including the Code of Practice on Disinformation,
the European Digital Media Observatory, a collectionof tools to combat the spread of disinformation, and a
Joint Communication (in collaboration with the European
External Action Service) analyzing the global responses todisinformation relating to the pandemic. The European
Union has been taking several steps, including thecomprehensive analysis of self-regulation assessments
submitted by Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Mozilla (asrequired by signature of the Code of Practice).

1.

supporting a multiplicity of independent factchecking organizations

2.

ensuring human moderators are in place tocomplement technological solutions

3.

voluntarily issuing transparency
COVID-19 disinformation4.

improving users’ media, digital and health literacy
skills.

reports

about

The report also highlights the role of social media platforms
as a key channel for distributing accurate information
about COVID-19. Significantly, however, neither of these
initiatives venture beyond self-regulation mechanisms
to advocate for international regulatory standards.
Conversely, this report concurs with the UNESCO briefthat national policy and self-regulation has thus far
been inadequate; proposing that the development andimplementation of a unified global regulatory framework
is crucial to addressing the spread of mis/disinformation
on social media platforms in times of crisis.
While many platforms have previously justified not
regulating content posted and shared by their users as
beyond their mandates and responsibilities, the pandemic
has compelled several previously opposed platforms tointroduce ‘fact checking’ and censoring mechanisms toaddress potentially dangerous or inflammatory content
concerning the virus, as well as often interrelated politicaland social issues such as the legitimacy and necessity of
preventative measures, and COVID-fueled hate speech.
For example, Facebook, and Instagram are working withindependent, third-party fact-checking organizations
who are certified through the non-partisan International
Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) to identify, review, and takeaction on crisis communication shared on their platforms.
As this study shows, respondents across all 24 countries
actively engage with digital platforms, from social media
to search platforms. This means that digital policy debates
regarding the spread of misinformation and the protectionof social media users require broad international scope toinclude not only high-income countries, but engage withdigital policy debates in low-and middle income countries
as well.

35 h
 ttps://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000377231
36 h ttps://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/online-disinformation

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67