Mitigating misinformation about the COVID-19 infodemic on social media: A conceptual framework

Jàmbá: Journal of Disaster Risk Studies

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Mitigating misinformation about the COVID-19 infodemic on social media: A conceptual framework
 
Creator Manene, Sivile Hove, Charity Cilliers, Liezel
 
Subject Information Systems; e-Health; infodemics infodemic; misinformation; COVID-19; social media; activity theory
Description During coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the term ‘infodemic’ was used to depict the abundance of information about COVID-19 on social media that may overwhelm users, as well as misinformation about the virus because of the lack of authentication of information posted on social media. Both the World Health Organization and United Nations have warned that infodemics can become a severe threat to health care if misinformation on social media is not addressed in a timely manner. The objective of this study was to develop a conceptual framework that can be used to mitigate misinformation about the COVID-19 infodemic on social media. A structured literature review of purposively sampled scholarly publications from academic databases was conducted. The inclusion criteria chosen were scholarly papers that investigated infodemics on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic in the past 4 years, which were analysed using thematic and content analysis. The conceptual framework used Activity Theory as the theoretical foundation. The framework identifies a set of strategies and activities for both social media platforms and users to mitigate misinformation on social media during a pandemic. This study, therefore, recommends that stakeholders utilise the developed framework on social media to reduce the spread of misinformation.Contribution: Based on the literature review, there are negative health outcomes during a social media infodemic because of the spread of misinformation on social media. The study concluded that by implementing a set of strategies and activities identified through the framework, health information can be managed on social media to improve health outcomes.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2023-05-30
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — —
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/jamba.v15i1.1416
 
Source Jàmbá: Journal of Disaster Risk Studies; Vol 15, No 1 (2023); 8 pages 1996-1421 2072-845X
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://jamba.org.za/index.php/jamba/article/view/1416/2569 https://jamba.org.za/index.php/jamba/article/view/1416/2570 https://jamba.org.za/index.php/jamba/article/view/1416/2571 https://jamba.org.za/index.php/jamba/article/view/1416/2572
 
Coverage — — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2023 Sivile Manene, Charity Hove, Liezel Cilliers https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
ADVERTISEMENT