Misinformation

A substantial proportion of people may refuse or delay taking a COVID-19 vaccine. Vaccine hesitancy is a severe threat to global health, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

It’s difficult by design to identify disinformation campaign instigators and their agendas. Consider the case of the “Plandemic” video that blazed across social media platforms in May 2020. The video contained a range of false claims and conspiracy theories about COVID-19.

WhatsApp has announced that it is piloting a new feature to help users fact check forwarded messages. The feature is being rolled out for pilot in a few countries first.

To contain and mitigate the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) misinformation pandemic needs multi-levelled, socio-cultural approaches.

Conspiracy theories appear to explain what we can’t control. They tend to confirm our bias, although false.

South Africans have been called on to be more careful and responsible when sharing information regarding the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on social media. This is to combat the rise of misinformation (fake news), which may be harmful to the society.

Images without context or presented with text that misrepresents what they show can be a powerful tool of misinformation, especially since photos make statements seem more believable.