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Elisa Clemente: Social media spread of misinformation and COVID-19 vaccine uptake

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As the COVID-19 vaccination programme progresses in Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, this article considers the causes and consequences of misinformation surrounding vaccines, and highlights possible ways to tackle it.

Information, misinformation and disinformation

With the increasingly widespread use and availability of the Internet, information is seemingly at the fingertips of a growing number of people all over the world. But is that really the case? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines information as ‘knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction; intelligence, news; facts, data’.

Conversely, misinformation is defined as ‘incorrect or misleading information’, while disinformation is ‘false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumours) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth’. Unfortunately, all three of them are accessible online, so it is ultimately down to each individual to tell them apart. The inability to distinguish between them can have clear negative consequences in people’s lives.

The role of social media in the spread of false information

As of late 2020, there is a reported total of roughly 2.8 billion monthly active Facebook users worldwide, 192 million daily active Twitter users, and 689 million monthly active TikTok users, to name but a few social media applications. On top of the high number of users, social media feeds are tailored to each individual based on previous interactions with the application, which can create ‘information silos and echo chamber effects’, decreasing the chances of an individual encountering differing viewpoints.

The potential for the spread of false news through social media is therefore considerable. The current COVID-19 pandemic has been no exception to that.

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