Hootsuite and WHO collaborating to counter misinformation

BY EVA TAYLOR AND ANDY PATTISON

It’s hard to believe that it has been three years since our world changed. When we first learned of COVID-19, people around the globe experienced a flood of emotions – from anxiousness and sadness to fear and isolation. But perhaps one of the most significant was uncertainty. Regardless of age, location or health status, people were left with many questions about the pandemic: What is COVID-19? How long will we be dealing with this?

Am I at risk?

With limited places to turn for this information, many relied on traditional media outlets for answers. But even with the most trusted news outlets reporting on the situation, there soon emerged an entirely new pandemic: that of misinformation.

Conflicting news reports, unclear guidelines on restrictions and uncertainty expressed by medical professionals themselves left people with more questions than answers – and, in turn, their own assumptions about the situation we collectively faced.

Social media: When the world shut down, digital channels opened up and, in addition to traditional media, many people turned to social as their primary news source. And with more than 4.7 billion social users globally, the reality set in early on that COVID19 misinformation would emerge into a pandemic of its own.

Social emerged as one of the most powerful drivers of misinformation spread, with many individuals seeing an opportunity to spread their own (often misinformed) thoughts and opinions on the pandemic. In the absence of fact-checking or validating statements, others saw this as the truth. If not combatted in real time, these statements had the potential to run rampant and result in detrimental, if not lifethreatening, consequences.

Nonetheless, social media also emerged as one of the true heroes of the pandemic. As the pioneers of the social media management space,

Hootsuite recognized the power it held in distributing critical information in real-time and amplifying factual voices on a global scale. And the World Health Organization (WHO) was one of the first global health agencies to agree and take action.

Using social media for good: When COVID-19 was officially de- joined in 2021, sharing its perspective on the power of social and digital media to support this goal. clared a public health emergency of international concern, WHO recognized that engaging the tech sector would be critical to advance global health innovation during such a critical moment in time. It initiated the Tech Task Force, a collaboration of companies working together to get factual information to audiences globally, combat misinformation and increase vaccine adoption. Hootsuite

With a newfound focus on social, the Task Force saw an opportunity to tap into an audience paving the way for content dissemination: content creators. WHO saw creators in the medical field – including scientists, doctors and frontline workers –speaking about COVID-19 on social media platforms in ways that it couldn’t and recognized a powerful partnership opportunity.

From there, Project Fides was born, bringing together a network of over 100 influencers, with a combined reach of over 40 million on TikTok alone, to create content debunking misinformation surrounding COVID19. Each week, prior to releasing any information publicly, WHO shared talking points with the creators on the latest developments in the pandemic, leaving it up to each creator to decide if they wanted to distribute it to their audience.

With close to three million follow-