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Infodemic AI simulator
(@Infodemic_simulator)
Hub AI
Infodemic AI simulator
(@Infodemic_simulator)
Infodemic
An infodemic is a rapid and far-reaching spread of both accurate and inaccurate information about certain issues. The word is a portmanteau of information and epidemic and is used as a metaphor to describe how misinformation and disinformation can spread like a virus from person to person and affect people like a disease. This term, originally coined in 2003 by David Rothkopf, rose to prominence in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In his 11 May 2003 article in the Washington Post—also published in Newsday, The Record, the Oakland Tribune, and the China Daily—foreign policy expert David Rothkopf, referred to the information epidemic—or "infodemic", in the context of the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak. The outbreak of SARS, which was caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 1 began in a remote region in Guangdong, China, in November 2002. By the time the outbreak ended in May 2003, it had reached 30 countries and there were over 8,000 confirmed cases and 774 deaths.
Rothkopf, who was at that time, a member of the advisory committee's board of directors at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security which provides policy recommendations to the United States government and the World Health Organization, said that the infodemic was the second of two concurrent epidemics. Rothkopf described how the "information epidemic" transformed SARS from a regional health crisis into a "debacle" that spread globally with both economic and social repercussions. He said this infodemic "was not the rapid spread of simple news via the media, nor is it simply the rumor mill on steroids. Rather, as with SARS, it is a complex phenomenon caused by the interaction of mainstream media, specialist media and internet sites, and 'informal' media, which is to say wireless phones, text messaging, pagers, faxes, and e-mail, all transmitting some combination of fact, rumor, interpretation, and propaganda." Rothkopf citing the State Department, said that 2002 was the "year of the most heightened state of terrorism panic in our history" even though terrorism globally had decreased to its "lowest level since 1969". His company, the Washington DC–based strategic intelligence and analysis firm Intellibridge, which he had founded in 1999, tracked the January 2003 Chinese reports on the outbreak. On 9 February 2003, Intellibridge provided their analysis to the U.S. defense community, and then posted the information on ProMED, a Federation of American Scientists Web site.
The general public did not learn of the outbreak until 23 February 2003, when an elderly woman died of SARS in her home in Toronto, Canada, from Hong Kong. Her son, who spread the disease in a Toronto hospital, also died. With the first death in North America, the Western media began to cover the outbreak. Rothkopf said that if more had been done earlier to manage the disease as well as information about SARS, perhaps there might not have been a worldwide panic. The infodemic spread globally, far beyond the countries that had SARS victims and "set off a chain reaction of economic and social consequences". It also made it harder for health organizations to control the SARS epidemic as panic spread online.
In his 15 December 2002 article entitled "Infodemiology: The epidemiology of (mis)information" in The American Journal of Medicine, health researcher Gunther Eysenbach coined the term infodemiologist and later used the term to refer to attempts at digital disease detection.
Use of the term infodemic increased rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic. A study found that from 2010-2020 there were 61 articles mentioning the word infodemic, while between 2020 and 2021 there were 14,301 published stories using the term. The United Nations and the World Health Organization began using the term infodemic during the COVID-19 pandemic as early as 2 February 2020. The related term disinfodemic (referring to COVID-19 disinformation campaigns) has been used by UNESCO. By the time that the Journal of Medical Internet Research published their June 2020 issue featuring the WHO's framework for managing the infodemic related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO and public health agencies had acknowledged infodemiology as an "emerging scientific field" that was of critical importance during a pandemic. By 2021, the WHO had published a number of resources clarifying the infodemic.
A Royal Society and British Academy joint report published in October 2020 said of infodemics that: "COVID-19 vaccine deployment faces an infodemic with misinformation often filling the knowledge void, characterised by: (1) distrust of science and selective use of expert authority, (2) distrust in pharmaceutical companies and government, (3) straightforward explanations, (4) use of emotion; and, (5) echo chambers," and to combat the ill and "inoculate the public" endorsed the Singaporean POFMA legislation, which criminalises misinformation. The Aspen Institute even started their misinformation project before the pandemic.
A blue-ribbon working group on infodemics, from the Forum on Information and Democracy, produced a report in November 2020, highlighting 250 recommendations to protect democracies, human rights, and health.
Infodemic
An infodemic is a rapid and far-reaching spread of both accurate and inaccurate information about certain issues. The word is a portmanteau of information and epidemic and is used as a metaphor to describe how misinformation and disinformation can spread like a virus from person to person and affect people like a disease. This term, originally coined in 2003 by David Rothkopf, rose to prominence in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In his 11 May 2003 article in the Washington Post—also published in Newsday, The Record, the Oakland Tribune, and the China Daily—foreign policy expert David Rothkopf, referred to the information epidemic—or "infodemic", in the context of the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak. The outbreak of SARS, which was caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 1 began in a remote region in Guangdong, China, in November 2002. By the time the outbreak ended in May 2003, it had reached 30 countries and there were over 8,000 confirmed cases and 774 deaths.
Rothkopf, who was at that time, a member of the advisory committee's board of directors at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security which provides policy recommendations to the United States government and the World Health Organization, said that the infodemic was the second of two concurrent epidemics. Rothkopf described how the "information epidemic" transformed SARS from a regional health crisis into a "debacle" that spread globally with both economic and social repercussions. He said this infodemic "was not the rapid spread of simple news via the media, nor is it simply the rumor mill on steroids. Rather, as with SARS, it is a complex phenomenon caused by the interaction of mainstream media, specialist media and internet sites, and 'informal' media, which is to say wireless phones, text messaging, pagers, faxes, and e-mail, all transmitting some combination of fact, rumor, interpretation, and propaganda." Rothkopf citing the State Department, said that 2002 was the "year of the most heightened state of terrorism panic in our history" even though terrorism globally had decreased to its "lowest level since 1969". His company, the Washington DC–based strategic intelligence and analysis firm Intellibridge, which he had founded in 1999, tracked the January 2003 Chinese reports on the outbreak. On 9 February 2003, Intellibridge provided their analysis to the U.S. defense community, and then posted the information on ProMED, a Federation of American Scientists Web site.
The general public did not learn of the outbreak until 23 February 2003, when an elderly woman died of SARS in her home in Toronto, Canada, from Hong Kong. Her son, who spread the disease in a Toronto hospital, also died. With the first death in North America, the Western media began to cover the outbreak. Rothkopf said that if more had been done earlier to manage the disease as well as information about SARS, perhaps there might not have been a worldwide panic. The infodemic spread globally, far beyond the countries that had SARS victims and "set off a chain reaction of economic and social consequences". It also made it harder for health organizations to control the SARS epidemic as panic spread online.
In his 15 December 2002 article entitled "Infodemiology: The epidemiology of (mis)information" in The American Journal of Medicine, health researcher Gunther Eysenbach coined the term infodemiologist and later used the term to refer to attempts at digital disease detection.
Use of the term infodemic increased rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic. A study found that from 2010-2020 there were 61 articles mentioning the word infodemic, while between 2020 and 2021 there were 14,301 published stories using the term. The United Nations and the World Health Organization began using the term infodemic during the COVID-19 pandemic as early as 2 February 2020. The related term disinfodemic (referring to COVID-19 disinformation campaigns) has been used by UNESCO. By the time that the Journal of Medical Internet Research published their June 2020 issue featuring the WHO's framework for managing the infodemic related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO and public health agencies had acknowledged infodemiology as an "emerging scientific field" that was of critical importance during a pandemic. By 2021, the WHO had published a number of resources clarifying the infodemic.
A Royal Society and British Academy joint report published in October 2020 said of infodemics that: "COVID-19 vaccine deployment faces an infodemic with misinformation often filling the knowledge void, characterised by: (1) distrust of science and selective use of expert authority, (2) distrust in pharmaceutical companies and government, (3) straightforward explanations, (4) use of emotion; and, (5) echo chambers," and to combat the ill and "inoculate the public" endorsed the Singaporean POFMA legislation, which criminalises misinformation. The Aspen Institute even started their misinformation project before the pandemic.
A blue-ribbon working group on infodemics, from the Forum on Information and Democracy, produced a report in November 2020, highlighting 250 recommendations to protect democracies, human rights, and health.