A Vaccine for Your Mind Joanna Lada and Jake Rose look at the increasing prevalence of ‘fake news’ and discuss ways to combat misinformation with inoculation theory
Social connectedness is allowing misinformation to
spread further and faster than ever before. Can the spread of misinformation ever be contained, or better yet, prevented? We live in times dominated by uncertainty. Headline-news events are swiftly followed by a myriad of online responses, proposed causes and remedies, cries of ‘conspiracy’, and demands for transparency. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the situation. False information are used to construct attention-grabbing stories that propagate mistruths. This is not new, but in our increasingly connected world it is becoming a more severe problem. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization put it perfectly when he said “we’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic”. Perhaps a solution lies in a vaccine — a psychological vaccine. False information can be described as misinformation (unknowingly incorrect) and disinformation (knowingly incorrect). Like a biological virus, they can spread through
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A Vaccine for Your Mind
social networks. The ongoing pandemic highlights that they can be just as dangerous. A widely discredited belief that injection or consumption of bleach can cure COVID-19, which began with an offhand remark by Donald Trump, led to 100 people calling an emergency hotline in Maryland alone with cases of bleach intoxication, with an overall spike in cases across America. Despite the poorly worded statement from the President, this likely would never have had such a large impact if it were not for the quick proliferation of the claim via social media accounts, notwithstanding its refutal within 24 hours by Dr Anthony Fauci, one of the key members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Information, no matter how incorrect, can rapidly spread regardless of expert opinion. Today, where every individual can go viral, the barriers to misinformation are low. The new ways of freely spreading information via social media require innovative countermeasures to contain the spread of misinformation. Social media giants such as Facebook have pushed to promote content from reputable
Michaelmas 2020
