Your say / coronavirus
‘It is obvious we have a huge need for information, but it could be a double-edged sword’
Breaking news: China will admit coronavirus coming from its lab. In this manner begins an awful lot of fake news published these days, trying to catch people’s attention and spread misinformation.
This one about coronavirus origins in a lab saying that China was prepared to admit the disease created in its laboratories – a highly shared conspiracy theory – was published by a site linked to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.
It is not a breaking news that Steve Bannon wants to stigmatise China as does Donald Trump, who uses the term “Chinese virus” with no remorse after being criticised for it.
is needed now More than ever
In the same way, we can find too many fake news stories on the internet by just typing “coronavirus” into the search bar, from the labs conspiracy theory, ideas that 5G technology transmits coronavirus and fake cures.
This fake news pandemic has not only been limited to words, but also in shared photographs, such as the dead man in Whuhan lying on the floor as it was normal to find death bodies on the street, and videos, such as people in desperate situations that actually happened years before and have no link with the pandemic.
These are the worst results of the need for information during this crisis, a problem heightened by the audiences growing television, radio and social media use during the pandemic.
According to Comscore, news websites and mobile apps in the week of March 16-22, 2020 went up by 68 per cent in France, 57 per cent in Germany, 125 per cent in Italy, 87 per cent in Spain, and 51 per cent in the UK.
This information could suggest a correlation between the countries that consume information the most and the ones that have higher numbers of coronavirus infections.
A similar patterns occurs with local news. The week of March 16-22, 2020, traffic to local news sites went up by 158 per cent in Spain, 125 per cent in France, 105 per cent in Italy, 101 per cent in Germany and 45 per cent in the UK.
BBC News has recorded its biggest weekly audience since 2015 as a result of its coronavirus coverage, while Channel 4 News’ audience has “effectively doubled” in ten days.
It is obvious we have a huge need for information, but it could be a double-edged sword, as the internet can spread much fake news.
The UK’s Cabinet Office is working together with social media firms to remove fake news and the UK anti-fake news unit is dealing with up to ten false coronavirus articles a day.
We all know the advantages of the internet, but at the same time we must be aware of risks it involves. Internet is an open data platform so anyone can publish what they want and information can be shared and spread as faster than can be imagined.
In reaction to the increased spread of false news, WhatsApp has set a new limit on forwarding information in its platform to cut off the spread of false information.
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Read more: Bristol24/7: Your trusted source of news in testing times
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But what can we do and how we can fight misinformation?
According to some data scientists and misinformation specialists, there are some tips we can use in order to verify information.
First of all, we should check article dates, and if it does not have one, assume it is because it is reusing information from some time ago.
We should know the source of information or check it. Is this source trustable or information comes from social media? Who has share it and publish it?
It is also important to check the language used, and think about whether it is sensationalist, if it contains mistakes or if the highlights are actually linked with the information below.
When using social media, we should be careful with memes of public figures saying quotes. Did actually the person say this quote? Is the account authentic?
For photographs, we should be trying to identify location details -a sign, posters, license plates.
And the most important thing in all of this is, is to break the misinformation chain: Do not share unverified information.
Yolanda Mir is an intern with Bristol24/7. She is from Catalonia in Spain.
Main photo: Twitter
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