Social media and Infodemiology—use of social media monitoring in emergency preparedness

As the coronavirus sweeps around the world, it has been accompanied by an abundance of misinformation (hereafter “infodemic”). At a time when reliable information is critical to combatting the COVID-19 pandemic, the transmission of “infodemic” is faster than the virus and poses challenges on the road to recovery. This infodemic may have far-ranging effects beyond what the actual virus can do. Researchers across the globe are attempting to understand the impact of the infodemic, and reportedly the most common fake news stories were related to the actions or policies of the public authorities, and COVID-19 illness, with the majority of the content being recontextualized or reframed. It was also found that even the mainstream media (e.g., Television, newspapers, press conferences, etc.) were not exempt from spreading the fake news. Therefore, it is critical to validate and debunk the misinformation via applying critical thinking to ensure factual accuracy. Infodemiology or Information Epidemiology that is defined as the science of distribution and determinants of information in an electronic medium with an overarching goal to inform public health policies. This offers a viable approach to measure the metrics, such as information prevalence, incidence, and concept occurrence ratios for understanding health-related behaviors of the population groups. In the wake of the current COVID-19 crisis, this chapter aims to elucidate the “misinformation” aspect of the pandemic and describes supply-side and demand-based features of Infodemiology for preventing the pollution of the health information systems. The authors of this chapter summarize the potential strategies to promote knowledge preparedness for the future emergency events.