Delivering actionable infodemic insights and recommendations for the COVID-19 pandemic response

Abstract

Introduction Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital communications and social networks have been used to support rapid real-time information-sharing about the virus and the disease in the public domain. The breadth of the exchanges, the diversity of sources and the polarity of opinions have sometimes resulted in indiscriminate amplification of both verified and unverified information. This info-demic 1 (too much information, including false or misleading information, in digital and physical environments during an acute public health event, which leads to confusion, risk-taking and behaviour that can harm health and lead to mistrust in health authorities and public health response) can prolong or amplify outbreaks and reduce the effectiveness of responses and interventions. To address this challenge, WHO's COVID-19 incident management support team's (IMST) Pillar 2 (risk communication, community engagement and infodemic management, Figure 1), in collaboration with research partners, developed an integrated method for public health infodemic analysis and insights generation for weekly analysis of social media, traditional media and other data sources, such as user search trends, epidemiological data and socio-behavioural data, to identify , categorize and understand the 1 Calleja N et al. A public health research agenda for managing infodemics: Methods and results of the first WHO infodemio-logy conference.