Gaining the upper hand on COVID-19 misinformation

Abstract

As the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic evolved, information about the virus also accumulated. However, accompanied by the quick emergence of factual information was an even greater abundance of false information. For example, by March 2020, videos containing non-factual information on COVID-19 accounted for over one-quarter of the most viewed videos on YouTube — greatly exceeding the popularity of factual videos released by governments and health professionals [1]. The World Health Organization declared this massive flux of misinformation surrounding COVID-19 an “infodemic”, where it is hard to distinguish between factual and non-factual information [2].