Citizen-Led Initiative Battles Dangerous ‘Infodemic'

To help students and others internationals who are living in the Netherlands during the coronavirus pandemic, a Facebook group was formed that translates news reports into English. Although messaging from the government is readily available in English, the ten university students who run the page are translating news broadcasts as a means of offering "contextual information about the crisis." One of the students explains, ""It is more about how expats navigate through society, whose society they don't really know, and I think that proper journalism is highly important for understanding the bigger picture."

Americans often want to connect to a cause beyond writing a check. Crowdsourcing is creating new forms of philanthropy globally, giving donors more choice and a stronger connection to the projects they fund.

Vaccine Talk is a Facebook group for evidence-based discussion to help both pro- and anti-vaccine people wade through all of the conflicting, and oftentimes wrong, information about the COVID-19 vaccine. The group has a tough reputation because of its strict moderation system and rules of discourse. Each of the group’s 70,000 members was approved by an administrator to join and committed to a code of conduct. Users must be ready to provide citations within 24 hours of posting and the moderators don’t hesitate to kick out members who lack civility, misrepresent themselves, or make unsubstantiated claims.

The NewsRun is “a daily newsletter that summarizes Pakistan’s major stories of the day." It’s helping Pakistani people stay on top of the news. Some Pakistani people who live in the country get overwhelmed with the daily news cycle, while Pakistani’s living abroad might have a language barrier or lack the context to understand the news. The clear, direct language of the newsletter makes the news accessible. "The way it’s written is clear and it highlights all the key points I need to know." The newsletter has thousands of Instagram followers and a “20 to 30 percent daily open rate.”

Santa Clara County City officials, together with the digital marketing agency XOMAD, paid 49 mico-influencers to promote COVID-19 vaccines and dispel misinformation. The micro-influencers were paid between $200 and $2,500, depending on their number of followers, frequency of posts, and level of engagement. Over two months, the influencers published 339 posts across Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram, which received 2.5 million total views and impressions.

Accredited social health activists (ASHA) across India fight COVID-19 related misinformation on WhatsApp. ASHAs provide basic health care to people in their villages, which puts them on the frontline of treating COVID-19 patients and educating people to dispel the many myths about the virus and its treatments. ASHAs' local interactions often identify prevailing myths, which they quickly dispel in their face-to-face exchanges and by posting in the many local WhatsApp groups that have been created. The local groups have been an effective mode of educating people and helped ASHAs gain villagers’ trust.

11Alive, a Georgia news station, runs a program called "Verify" that helps residents get accurate information and slow the spread of disinformation. Viewers submit a form online or via an app to request any piece of information be debunked or verified. If deemed a verifiable request, a 13-member team of reporters, editors, and producers investigate it by reaching out to experts and other sources. Since disinformation spreads quickly, “Verify” uses Google Analytics and search engine optimization (SEO) to get the most exposure and gain traction when a verification article is posted.

CekFakta is a collaborative network that fights misinformation with around 6,000 fact-checkers from major Indonesian media organizations, citizens, and academics. The group holds training sessions to help journalists identify doctored images and misinformation, with the idea that participants will pass the skills on to their colleagues. CekFakta impacted 2019 presidential debates with large-scale, real-time, collaborative fact-checking that enabled a quick release of fact-checked information. The collaborative process is key to helping people find high-quality information amid so much online content.

Logically is a fact-checking app that combines AI technology and human research to assess and label the truthfulness of news articles. The app has about 20,000 users after a soft launch in the UK, with a full launch planned for late 2020. The AI technology, a feature that makes the app unique, tries to match news claims to other sources and then human researchers take over to make a final judgment. The app has been busy fact-checking the extensive Covid-19 related misinformation. Some aspects, like technology glitches and slow fact-checking responses from researchers, still need to be worked out.

The coronavirus pandemic has invigorated organizations working in the Baltics to counter disinformation, particularly from Russia, by flagging suspicious accounts, fake news, and hate speech. For example, Covid-19 led hundreds of Lithuanian medics to a group called the Elves to flag disinformation about the virus and related government responses. The groups partner with and receive funding from local and international sources, including Facebook and the Google News Innovation Fund. Some question whether highlighting stories, websites, and user accounts as fake might actually help to disseminate them further.