Alejandro Castillo* reviews the problems of getting the correct COVID-19 messages across in the social media age.
Since the World Health Organisation declared a global pandemic on 11 March we’ve seen a broad spectrum of attempts to handle the spread of COVID-19.
The success or failure of various States to deal with this has been well reported.
However, global viruses are not just matters of public health; they also bring up issues about which sources of information can be trusted and how to convince people of the truth.
Misinformation surrounding viral pandemics is certainly nothing new.
Contrary to narratives from the time, the 1918 Spanish Flu did not originate in Spain, nor did it kill the majority of people infected.
Case fatality rates were around 2.5 per cent and were exacerbated by overcrowding and poor hygiene in hospitals.
The misinformation surrounding COVID-19 is a different beast altogether.
Rather than being remembered as the ‘China virus’, as United States President, Donald Trump would suggest, COVID-19 should be remembered as the Facebook virus.
It was the first global pandemic in the age of mass social media.
Social media has responded to COVID-19 in the exact ways one would imagine, with different users sharing and liking different views on its spread and handling.
Far-right groups have used an atmosphere of heightened tension to push back against migration and liberal democracy.
Scientific advice has been drawn into a whirlwind of debates on individual liberty and the power of the State.
Seemingly straightforward statements like “wearing masks reduce the risk of spreading droplets”, have turned into ideological battlegrounds.
Democratic voters in the US are 23 per cent more likely than Republican voters to say they wear masks “all or most of the time”.
The pandemic is a chilling global experiment not just in how to contain highly contagious viruses, but in how to contain highly contagious misinformation.
How have States responded to diverging media narratives and attempted to get a grip on messaging?
In some cases, the driving force of conspiracy theories has not been fringe Twitter groups and far-right organisations, but State leaders themselves.
There have been hyper-masculine ‘ironmen’ leaders who have built a cult of personality around toughness.
They range from Trump and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil to Vladimir Putin of Russia.
These leaders have made considerable efforts to downplay the threat of the virus and to insist it would pose no threat to them personally.
Bolsonaro called the virus a “measly cold”.
In these instances, State leaders embraced the art of disinformation in order to bolster their image and distract from their countries having high fatality rates.
However, most high-profile State leaders have attempted to use their media platform to combat the fictitious narratives that have arisen around the virus.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany was lauded for her concise and accurate description of the COVID-19 transmission rate.
Yet in spite of her Government’s best efforts, Germany has not remained immune to virus misinformation.
On 30August ‘anti-Corona’ protests erupted in Berlin and London, both fuelled by common narratives of misinformation.
In Berlin, far-right organisations, such as the Reich Citizens, attempted to storm the Bundestag.
Their speakers talked of the dangers of the 5G telecommunications network, a well-established conspiracy theory.
Protestors also waved signs in support of QAnon, a fast-spreading theory that Trump is waging war against elite Satan-worshippers in America.
In London, protestors chanted similar slogans about 5G, the danger of vaccinations and the virus being a ‘hoax’.
The similarity of protests in Berlin and London seem to indicate that the spread of virus misinformation in certain countries is not necessarily linked to how well the State has been seen to cope with the virus itself.
Pew Research showed that 88 per cent of Germans thought their Government had coped well with the virus compared with 46 per cent of Britons.
Even so, far-right organisations and social media groups have still succeeded in spreading conspiracy theories in both countries.
Academics based in Australia and the US have conducted a statistical analysis of virus misinformation.
They found the country with the highest proportion of misinformation narratives on COVID-19 was China at 22 per cent; second was the US at 14 per cent and Germany at 10 per cent.
Taiwan was at the bottom with just five per cent of media stories found to be misinformation.
China’s significant lead can most likely be explained by the fact that their fact-checking websites are, unsurprisingly, run by the Communist Party.
How has Taiwan led the way in combating false narratives?
A method that is both creative and quite simple is humour.
Taiwan’s Digital Minister, Audrey Tang, called for “humour over rumour” by trawling the internet in order to address fake news with humorous posts that contained the correct information.
The Taiwanese have even employed professional comedians as “engagement officers”.
Taiwan combines the carrot with the stick, threatening those that spread misinformation that endangers public health with three years in prison.
A man from Taipei City was arrested in February for spreading rumours that the military had taken over the city due to the spread of the virus.
Audrey Tang has called this strategy of combating online rumours “nerd immunity”.
It builds public awareness and inoculates the population against dangerous misinformation.
Over the next few months Governments and public health organisations may feel as if fighting against false COVID-19 rumours is an uphill battle.
However, Taiwan has proved that there are still creative and effective ways of combatting misinformation.
*Alejandro Castillo earned his BA History degree from University College London. He specialises in modern history and intends to take a Master’s degree in International Relations.
This article first appeared on the Global Politics website.
