COVID-19, fake news, and the sleep of communicative reason producing monsters: The narrative of risks and the risks of narratives

Abstract

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, the world has witnessed growing tension from the pandemic dimension of a disease with severe epidemiological impacts and wide-reaching sociocultural and political spinoffs. In ideal conditions of public communication, the authorities would be aligned with a totally transparent system supplying abundant information and ease of understanding to generate credibility, confidence, and partnership with the media. In the hiatuses of acceptable versions and in the midst of indeterminations, individuals become their own experts, consuming fake news and reproducing fallacious risk narratives with disastrous consequences. The article discusses various aspects of fake news and the use of communicative reason by public authorities, citing the case of Iran and drawing parallels with the antivaccination movement and its consequences. The authors address the challenge of coordinated orientation of society with information, competing with pseudo-scientific pastiches that proliferate at breakneck speed in the absence of official data. All this raises the following question: which communication models should back the official narrative to create the conditions for collaboration and partnership with the media? What impacts would such models have on the proliferation of misleading narratives that citizens turn to during crises of appropriate orientation? The authors conclude that it is also the government's role to use its broad visibility to create references of safety under the primacy of communicative reason, sensitive to society's genuine questions and concerns. In short, government should produce responsible references on a monumental scale, oriented by the ethics of accountability in line with the common good.