COVID-19 infodemic on Facebook and containment measures in Italy, United Kingdom and New Zealand.

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 pandemic has been characterized by a social media "infodemic": an overabundance of information whose authenticity may not always be guaranteed. With the potential to lead individuals to harmful decisions for the society, this infodemic represents a severe threat to information security, public health and democracy. In this paper, we assess the interplay between the infodemic and specific aspects of the pandemic, such as the number of cases, the strictness of containment measures, and the news media coverage. We perform a comparative study on three countries that employed different managements of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-namely Italy, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. We first analyze the three countries from an epidemiological perspective to characterize the impact of

SUBMITTER: Etta G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9119508 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature