Assessing Infodemics: Rethinking Humanitarian Governance

Technological advancements in communication and digital technologies have greatly influenced the humanitarian sector, enabling better, more effective risk communication even in remote and geographically vulnerable areas during disasters. Similarly, early warning systems have drastically reduced the mortality in natural disasters such as cyclones, floods, and heat waves. Part of the reason for this increased communication can be attributed to the decentralized structure of digital communication technologies which has been successful in reaching the mass, even the economically challenged class. In particular, accessible internet and social media have revolutionized media and have brought formal media platforms to digital media. While connectivity has greatly increased, various issues such as fake news and the use of deep-fake technologies have come to the foreground. The COVID-19 pandemic in this context is a vital example that not only exposed gaps in our healthcare systems but also exhibited how mass panic can lead to the world’s largest infodemic.

The root cause of the infodemic stems from unchecked messages that are easy to create and share. In 2020, when COVID-19 risks were communicated, many daily wage laborers left cities on foot for their hometowns. Poor communication and misinformation, rather than the virus itself, led to tragic outcomes—including deaths from exhaustion, illness, accidents, and even suicide^[1]. In this context, fake news and incorrect information regarding the availability of transportation services and healthcare services became widely circulated^[2]. Fear, stigma, and uncertainty further weakened top-down messaging, while the lack of clear policies and reliable information gave rise to speculation and self-constructed narratives.

Mapping of the Infodemic

The researchers mapped the effect of infodemic in three very different countries including  Bangladesh (developing), India (emerging), and the UK (developed) with varied socioeconomic contexts. Irrespective of these differences, all three countries experienced infodemic stemming from excessive risk communication mixed with a variety of concerns, opinions, misinformation, and disinformation. While many health studies assessed it for COVID-19, the infodemic is here to stay. The presence of an infodemic like situation was evident in various bomb threats received at airports in India, the collapse of the Bangladeshi government in 2024, and riots in the UK.

These researchers therefore mapped the state of infodemics in the three countries, sought the key challenges and best practices, and reviewed and evaluated policies for gaps and suggestions for future disaster risk communication. They adopted a mixed-method approach using qualitative and quantitative data and methods. Post the literature review, the data was gathered from leading national newspapers in all the countries from 1 Jan 2022 to 30 June 2024. These newspapers were chosen based on their readership. Deadline with a massive amount of data, HCI methodology, and natural language processing were used to extract data with the help of 22 infodemic keywords that were selected from the literature review. The extracted data was then cleaned to find and identify instances that led to the infodemic.

Analysis

It was observed that despite efforts to curb the infodemic, it has increased over time, and has manifested differently in different countries. While looking at the kind of data, it surfaced that some of the dominant infodemic content relates to blame or opinion or a conspiracy theory. The opinion of an individual or few may appear harmless but when the same goes viral in already vulnerable times, leads to more polarization in society leading to other societal and political challenges. This is how the infodemic expands beyond just the disaster that it stems from.

Comparative mapping of the infodemic content showed that India, being the most populated of the three, has the most amount of data pointing to the infodemic. While analyzing when these infodemic peaks occurred and why, the dominant trend appeared to be coinciding with significant political incidents, elections, or extreme responses such as vaccination. Some peaks also pointed to other parallel events such as floods or fires. Therefore it can be inferred that any event that is happening in society that triggers fear and insecurity can likely lead to an infodemic peak. Observing these peaks in the three countries, also show a higher reporting of the infodemic in urban areas as compared to rural areas. These trends can be observed in capital cities, places of over-population and certain areas where the population is particularly vulnerable such as the Cox bazaar in Bangladesh (where there is a Rohingya settlement), West Bengal, and Goa in India (because of political tensions and floods and cyclones), and in the UK this was limited to major cities.

The researchers interviewed 105 stakeholders—30 from each country and 15 international experts—to assess the impact of the infodemic. In the UK, most respondents reported that their organizations were directly affected. However, in Bangladesh and India, stakeholders perceived the infodemic as a national issue rather than one that significantly impacted individual organizations.

When asked to define an infodemic, most respondents associated it with misinformation. The nature of misleading content varied by country: Bangladesh experienced more rumors, while India faced a mix of rumors, fake news, viral lies, and pseudoscientific theories. In contrast, the UK reported both misinformation and disinformation.

Causes and Impact

In terms of the causes of the infodemic, the common denominators came to be fake news on social media, lack of education, lack of proper information, fear, crises, and lack of fact-checking tools and agencies. Especially, low-literate individuals are struck by the negativity of the infodemic incidents more acutely where their inability and awareness to verify the information plays a critical role. Their reliance on social networks for news and other concurrent information exposes them to further vulnerability. On the other hand, there are also specific causes that stem from the socio-economic-political situation of each country and region - which shows that the theory of infodemic must also be contextualized in specific time and geographical regions based on their characteristics. Similarly, while assessing the impact of the infodemic, it was deduced that increased stress and anxiety in citizens were common in all countries. This stress and anxiety however manifested differently in different contexts, as Bangladesh saw an increasing distrust in the government and inflation, India witnessed media fatigue and depression, and in the UK this also led to further polarization of views.

This research highlighted new challenges of risk communication governance that must be brought to the attention of humanitarian actors and governments.

-       In the plethora of communication platforms available today, governments and agencies need to formulate policies and plans to better communicate. How do you design communication policies based on local contexts? For example, how you address fisherfolk in India is very different from how you would address to someone in the city, both of them would have different incentives to move during a crisis.  What can we learn from actions taken during Covid-19? For instance, lockdowns without a plan of action that caters to migrant workers are not ideal for risk mitigation. A comprehensive review must be carried out.

-       Social media platforms, AI tools and applications, and other information technologies require clear regulations and laws to reduce the misuse of these platforms. A prime example of this is how individuals believed various unscientific cures on social media, and no action was taken on determining the source of such heavily forwarded misinformation.

-       Hype, propaganda, and attention economy are the basis on which a lot of systems are functioning today. This must change. How can we reimagine the systems? For instance, is it necessary to judge news sites based on social media followers? Or is it necessary that content creators only get paid based on how many ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ their posts have? This begs the question of what tools we require to identify them and respond to infodemic at an individual level.

-       Information overload and media fatigue that plague society are other challenges. When individuals are bombarded by a constant stream of messages, it becomes increasingly difficult to sift through and trust reliable information amidst the noise. This saturation of messages not only undermines top-down communication but also paves the way for confusion.  How to prepare and plan an effective risk communication channel at such a time?

-       Increased investments are required in strengthening the risk communication policies. This requires partnerships between national authorities, private media companies, and humanitarian agencies and organizations. These organizations now must also encompass social media, and technology firms which largely dictate how information is received and spread at an individual level.

And lastly, countries and humanitarian agencies must also share their best practices to build more resilience. The rise of fact-checking agencies, Community engagement, contextualizing risk communication, enhanced participation of experts and experienced professionals, coordination and cooperation techniques, and clear transparent policy formulations are some of the many practices that can be identified today in different regions.

Assessing Infodemic in the Post COVID-19 Risk Communication & Governance” is a research project that the Global Development Network funded in collaboration with the Japanese Government. HOISA (Humanitarian Observatory Initiative in South Asia) had the privilege to invite Dr. Shabana Khan, Dr. Jyoti Mishra and Dr. Nova Ahmed who have been working on this project to understand the infodemic in India, Bangladesh and the United Kingdom.

Authors

Dr. Shabana Khan - Founder and Director of Indian Research Academy, India

Dr. Jyoti Mishra - World Social Science Fellow in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR); Associate Professor, UK

Dr. Nova Ahmed -  Computer Scientist and Professor at North South University, Bangladesh

Mihir R. Bhatt (All India Disaster Mitigation Institute- AIDMI)

Khayal Trivedi (Humanitarian Observatory Initiative in South Asia- HOISA)

Edited by Spandan Pandya

^[1] Yadav, Avadhesh Kumar. COVID-19: Panic Due to Fake News on Social Media in India. Medical Journal of Dr. D.Y. Patil Vidyapeeth 15(1):p 136-138, Jan–Feb 2022. | DOI: 10.4103/mjdrdypu.mjdrdypu_264_20

^[2] Al-Zaman, M. S. (2021). COVID-19-Related Social Media Fake News in India. Journalism and Media, 2(1), 100-114. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia2010007