INFODEMICS, INFOSPHERES AND COVID-19
Channel: A Singaporean
Date: 2020-11-27

INFODEMICS, INFOSPHERES AND COVID-19

The infodemic threat

Since February 2020, the World Health Organisation has expressed concern about an ongoing "infodemic", a plague of fake news and misinformation designed to mislead netizens, which is infesting social media.

While social media can of course be employed to inform the public about the Covid-19 situation, it is simultaneously increasingly being hijacked by malicious users to amplify conspiracy theories and promote falsehoods about the virus.

Although it may not seem so serious at first glance, the infodemic may actually present a heavy setback to the global pandemic response.

As lies about vaccines circulate, people will become more paranoid about the supposed dangers of even approved vaccines, hurting the deployment of immunisation programmes. Because vaccines require a vast majority of the general population to be inoculated to ensure proper herd immunity, if a large segment resists vaccination attempts after being influenced by the infodemic, then the ability to contain the Coronavirus will be severely diminished.

The infosphere

The "infosphere" is the online information that each netizen consumes on a daily basis. An exposure to low quality information may lead a user to make poor health choices.

A key determinant of the quality of a person's infosphere is the online presence of celebrities, who, due to speaking from a position of authority, can spread falsehoods with relative ease as they are viewed by others as trustworthy and reliable by default.

Netizens with poor online literacy may also base their judgement on the reliability of a source not on evidence, but on the popularity of a piece, usually determined through the number of "likes" or "shares" it has.

Thus, as online literacy is still not sufficiently widespread and public education takes time, then something must be done about the propagators of fake news now.

And the cure is POFMA

Singapore is well-positioned to deal with the dangers of infodemics and the declining quality of infospheres.

The Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act, or POFMA for short, was passed in specifically to deal with a crisis like the infodemic.

In Part 2 Section 7(1)(b)(ii) of POFMA, it is stated that communication of a statement that prejudicial to public health done by a person, whether inside or outside of Singapore, is expressedly forbidden. Should someone attempt to spread lies about vaccination programmes or Covid-19, we may have an avenue to for them to retract the incorrect statement, or if they fail to do so, to fine or incarcerate them.

Therefore, it can be concluded that Singapore already possesses the legal tools to mitigate the damage of any deluge of disinformation. Now, it is only up to a matter of enforcement to protect our citizens from such dangers.