Opinion: How disciplined guesswork can combat the next infodemic

An infodemic — a portmanteau of “information" and “epidemic” — refers to the rapid circulation and abundance of both accurate and inaccurate information about an issue such as a disease outbreak. As competing facts, rumors, concerns, and fears circulate, it becomes increasingly difficult to know right from wrong, which in turn breeds distrust, and gives rise to conspiracy theories that seek to fill the knowledge gap. Sound familiar? That’s because we are living in the age of the infodemic.  

Rising divisive and hate speech online, including misinformation and disinformation allowed to spread like wildfire on social media, is a crisis that needs to be taken seriously. Recent trends in the social media ecosystem, such as the disbanding of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council, are not encouraging and could have devastating consequences for society, including on public health and well-being.  

A newly published historical analysis by the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe shows that while infodemics in the realm of public health are not in themselves new, their intensity has increased over the past 50 years. A review of historical cases — the 1918 influenza pandemic, the early years of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, and the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak — shows that all three were associated with information-related challenges, including difficulties with the volume, veracity, and variety of information available, along with information voids created variously by a lack of knowledge or suppression of information.