SOCIAL MEDIA AND DIGITAL FUTURES IN INDIAN COVID – 19 ERA

Abstract

The present paper addresses the importance of Social Media platforms during pandemic. It has been discussed as to how social media platforms have been a key piece for the dissemination of information as never in human history earlier, it has been possible to communicate so quickly. Its usage has shown to increase in situations of natural disaster and other crises. Responsible use of these tools can help quickly disseminate important new information, relevant new scientific findings, share diagnostic, treatment, and follow-up protocols, as well as compare different approaches globally, removing geographic boundaries for the first time in history. Through social media communication, the scientific community got enabled to collaborate, coordinate research and knowledge, around the globe in a faster way and enhance their capabilities to make a more resilient community. Following the descriptive methodology, paper attempts to list out the points as to how during the 2020 global pandemic, social media has become an ally but also a potential threat and how effective as a tool it is during present pandemic. How effectively social media is circulating the most important findings of a disease, with a decreased knowledge transition time to other healthcare providers (HCPs) is documented in detail in the paper. It is further documented as to how the high volumes of information compressed into a short period can result in overwhelmed HCPs trying to discern fact from noise. For the ease in practice and in the research, to use these tools in a responsible and useful way, it is recommended to follow some basic guidelines when sharing information on social networks in the COVID-19 era. In this paper, we summarize the most relevant information on the influence, advantages, and disadvantages of the use of social networks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, the present study deals with the importance of digital space and the impact of digitization to deal with the health crisis and economic crises in tandem. Further the paper attempts to list down the key issues that are important for research and practice and concludes that there is an opportunity to grow as a digital scientific community as well as the digital lay public by equipping them with the required resources and accesses to deal with the post COVID -19 scenario which is a digital form of present scenario.