“We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic,” World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned.
The WHO defines an infodemic as “an over-abundance of information, some accurate and some not, that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it”.
The current infodemic has been worsened by the global scale of the health crisis and by the contributions of social media influencers and some world leaders. Brasil's Bolsonaro has dismissed Covid-19 as a “fantasy” and a “small flu”, even as cases have been overwhelming hospitals, morgues and cemeteries across Latin America’s largest country. He recently also fired his health minister and joined protests in the capital Brasilia against shutdown measures imposed by governors.
According to a study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the Oxford Internet Institute entitled, Types, claims and sources of Covid-19 misinformation, “false information spread by politicians, celebrities, and other prominent public figures” accounted for 69 percent of total engagement on social media, even though their claims made up just 20 percent of those included in the study’s sample.
With 78.4 million followers on Twitter and a TV audience that sometimes surpasses 10 million viewers for his daily briefings, Trump is one of the world’s leading global influencers.
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