The Studies

"According to a new report published earlier this week by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford found that roughly one third of social media users across the United States, as well as Argentina, Germany, South Korea, Spain and United Kingdom, reported seeing false or misleading information about coronavirus." Attempts to even label misinformation have fallen dramatically short as TheConversation noted recently – and the reason is sadly too obvious: "social media platforms tend to use automated algorithms for these tasks, because they scale well." In other words it takes humans to understand what is truly misinformation or disinformation, but even more human eyeballs wouldn't solve the problem. "Tweets can be shared millions of times before being labeled. Even if removed, they can easily be edited and then reposted to avoid algorithmic detections.

The very nature of social media allows for information to be readily shared – and unlike traditional news outlets there is no filter, no fact checking and often a lot of bias. "Government officials and public leaders who are dealing with this global health crisis daily basis are equally responsible for providing accurate, scientific information on a regular basis in combating misinformation and rumor," noted Kapucu. "If the accurate scientific information is not provided by public officials, crisis leaders on a regular basis during press releases, this provides an opportunity for the spread of misinformation."

Traffic is Traffic

Another factor in all this is that at the end of the day the social platforms want to keep users engaged. Content that "goes viral" is good for business. "This generates additional traffic and economic value for the social media companies," said Crandall. "The publishers of misleading information benefit. Whether it's a public figure, a nefarious foreign organization, PAC, or simply some grandstanding individual, they use social media platforms to 'control the conversation' and push their private agendas to their believers."Even worse is that many on the receiving end may believe they actually benefit from this." And because they believe it bet