Media release

From: Cell Press

The things pandemics and infodemics don’t have in common could help us learn to fight them

The term “infodemic”—referring to an epidemic of information—was coined in 2003 to describe the amplification of news about the SARS outbreak that new information technologies had made possible. It’s also come to mean the rapid spread of misinformation that happens through social media platforms and other outlets. Now, following two years of COVID-19 that have continued to highlight the importance of information distribution during health emergencies, experts argue in a commentary appearing in the journal Cell December 9 that our understanding of infodemics isn’t complete enough to allow us to solve the challenges they pose.

The comparison of infodemics to pandemics might actually be keeping us from fighting them effectively, the authors, who come from the World Health Organization and other health and research institutions around the world, suggest. In the commentary, they outline ways in which pandemics and infodemics differ, highlight areas of study still widely debated by scientists that are key to infodemic management, and suggest steps forward that may allow us to be better prepared for future pandemics.

“The apparent analogies between epidemics and infodemics have led to the suggestion that scientists and policymakers can investigate, model, and monitor the two phenomena similarly,” the authors write. “We need to better understand how individuals acquire or avoid information and how those decisions may influence their behavior. Despite the several projects and initiatives aimed at providing correct information to users, the impact of this information on personal choices is still an open issue.”

“Unlike with a virus, we can decide to accept or not to accept information,” says co-author Walter Quattrociocchi (@Walter4C) of Sapienza University of Rome. “This peculiarity makes the respective modeling and forecasting processes completely different.”