How My Mum Found the Cure for Covid: The Dissemination of Fake News on WhatsApp During the Covid-19 Pandemic
The second public concern that Kaye (2019) discusses in relation to online content moderation is disinformation.
In my previous post, I discussed how social media can be used as an area for the dissemination of far-right extremism. In this post, I will argue that social media can also be used to spread disinformation.
Kaye (2019) draws upon the example of the 2017 Presidential election in Kenya and the role of WhatsApp in the spread of disinformation during this period. For many, WhatsApp is an appealing app due to how easily users can share photos and videos — however, during the 2017 Kenyan elections it was also used to spread fake news, creating fear and distrust amongst the public (Mutahi, & Kimari, 2020). One study found that 90% of Kenyan people had viewed fake news at this time (as cited in Kaye, 2019). The disinformation shared during the Kenyan 2017 elections had three main goals: to influence voter decisions, to damage government reputation, and to heighten tension (Mutahi, & Kimari, 2020).
As of recent times, when someone says ‘disinformation’, the first thing I think of is Covid-19.
Throughout the recent Covid-19 lockdowns, I started to notice a number of memes being shared online about parents and fake news on WhatsApp — everything from anti-vax ‘facts’ to home-made remedies — parents were believing what they read on the chat service and tyring to convince their children they had found the key to ending the pandemic (spoiler alert: they had not).
While amusing, these images do prompt an interesting question: how has fake news affected public opinion during the Covid-19 pandemic? Has WhatsApp played a role?
Several studies have documented the dissemination of fake news via WhatsApp during the Covid-19 pandemic. As said by Tasnim et al (2020), the issue is that fake news poses a risk to reliable news as social media allows it to spread far more rapidly. In relation to Covid-19, fake news may pose a public health concern: as we have seen in the images above, ‘remedies’ are circulating WhatsApp, which may lead to the hindering of behaviours such as hand washing or social distancing, encouraging the spread of the virus (Tasnim, et al., 2020).
Instances of fake news on WhatsApp have been observed all over the World. In Spain, videos and audios from healthcare workers asking for more protective equipment circulated on WhatsApp, contradicting the Government’s insistence that the situation in Spain was not severe and leading the Spanish public to place more trust in information they received over WhatsApp (Elías, & Catalan-Matamoros, 2020). A study conducted in Brazil found that 65% of fake news disseminated during the Covid-19 pandemic was based around homemade infection prevention methods and a further 20% was based around homemade cures — overall, 73.7% of the fake news analysed was shared via WhatsApp (Galhardi, et al., 2020). Similarly, surveys carried out in India found that the majority of respondents receive fake news over WhatsApp (61%) — 47% of this speculated as to the causes of Covid-19, with 74% of respondents indicating that fake news pertaining to Covid-19 had impacted them negatively (Balarabe, & Kumar, 2020). There is a clear focus amongst studies of fake news during the Covi9–19 pandemic — Worldwide, people are receiving information about causes and cures that are absolutely not correct.
The issue, as previously mentioned, is that this is likely to lead the public to stop listening to official guidance, potentially increasing the spread of Covid-19. In all cases, WhatsApp has aided the dissemination of fake news during the Covid-19 pandemic, due to the app’s ability to allow quick sharing of video and audio between large groups of people.
