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Cited by 551Misinformation and Its ImpactsAcademic Publishing and Open AccessHealth Literacy and Information Accessibility

How to Fight an Infodemic: The Four Pillars of Infodemic Management

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Eysenbach, Gunther·2020·Journal of Medical Internet Research
DOI 10.2196/21820PMC PMC7332253

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Abstract

In this issue of the Journal of Medical Internet Research, the World Health Organization (WHO) is presenting a framework for managing the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infodemic. Infodemiology is now acknowledged by public health organizations and the WHO as an important emerging scientific field and critical area of practice during a pandemic. From the perspective of being the first “infodemiologist” who originally coined the term almost two decades ago, I am positing four pillars of infodemic management: (1) information monitoring (infoveillance); (2) building eHealth Literacy and science literacy capacity; (3) encouraging knowledge refinement and quality improvement processes such as fact checking and peer-review; and (4) accurate and timely knowledge translation, minimizing distorting factors such as political or commercial influences. In the current COVID-19 pandemic, the United Nations has advocated that facts and science should be promoted and that these constitute the antidote to the current infodemic. This is in stark contrast to the realities of infodemic mismanagement and misguided upstream filtering, where social media platforms such as Twitter have advertising policies that sideline science organizations and science publishers, treating peer-reviewed science as “inappropriate content.”

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  • The choice of Twitter API was the safest to date because biases affecting the Sample API are not found in REST and Filter APIs.

    “Note that this choice is the safest as to date: in fact, it has been recently shown that biases affecting Sample API (which samples data based on rate limits), for instance, are not found in REST and Filter APIs 40 .”

    From Assessing the risks of ‘infodemics’ in response to COVID-19 epidemics (2020) · cites this paper as [40]

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Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. [7]E-collection 'Infodemiology and Infoveillance' Journal of Medical Internet Research 2020-06-26 https://www.jmir.org/themes/69 PMC7189791 32310818
  2. [22]E-collection 'eHealth Literacy / Digital Literacy' Journal of Medical Internet Research 2020-06-26 https://www.jmir.org/themes/70

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Authors
Eysenbach, G.
ORCID
Eysenbach, Gunther
Venue
Journal of Medical Internet Research
Publisher
JMIR Publications Inc.
Published
2020-06-29
Volume
22
Issue
6
Pages
e21820
ISSN
1438-8871 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.2196/21820
PMC
PMC7332253
OpenAlex
W3037960575
Cited by
551
References
15
Citations by year
2026: 64 · 2025: 60 · 2024: 74 · 2023: 95 · 2022: 111 · 2021: 119 · 2020: 28
FWCI
117.96
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by
Locations
  • Journal of Medical Internet Research (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Academic Publishing and Open Access
  • Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Literacy and Information Accessibility
Keywords
infodemic management, infodemiology, COVID-19 pandemic, infoveillance, digital health literacy, scientific literacy, fact-checking, peer review, knowledge translation, misinformation, science communication
MeSH terms
Betacoronavirus, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Health Education, Humans, Pneumonia, Viral, Politics, Public Health, World Health Organization, Coronavirus Infections, Health Literacy, Pandemics, Social Media

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