The COVID-19 infodemic in social media: political exaggeration and communicative autonomy

This study aims to assess the difficulty of maintaining the interpretative autonomy of communication professionals and citizens, in the face of information about the global pandemic. At the same time, this research analyzes critically the World Health Organization's accusation of an 'infod...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Ferré Pavia, Carme|||0000-0002-7258-6376, Abrego Montenegro, Karen|||0000-0002-6058-1789
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:307270
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/307270
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.5210/fm.v28i6.12470
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Communicative autonomy
Covid-19
Infodemic
Social Media
Twitter
Descripción
Sumario:This study aims to assess the difficulty of maintaining the interpretative autonomy of communication professionals and citizens, in the face of information about the global pandemic. At the same time, this research analyzes critically the World Health Organization's accusation of an 'infodemic'; was it confirmed or should it be regarded as political exaggeration? An analysis was made of 15,000 tweets around the world, with more than 1,000 RTs for each one, that circulated from 6 February to 18 March 2020. The results demonstrate that it is not so much possible to speak of infodemic but of a remarkable difficulty in interpreting information, together with a preponderant weight of opinion and emotionality. Academia is responsible for disseminating concepts; corporations, for filtering ethically their content; the political class, for not hiding behind the infodemic to lower the challenge of managing the pandemic.