How to Spot Covid Misinformation on Social Media
It is no secret that in the past decade trust in the mainstream media has steadily declined in the US. Due to this some Americans have turned toward social media for their news related to Covid and the pandemic. Here I want to explore some of the Covid misinformation pages in hopes of helping people spot red flags. Social media can be a great place for disseminating news, but is likewise a great place for spreading propaganda.
The first red flag I want to talk about is explicit encouragement to break the law. No credible news source will ever tell its viewers to break laws and this tweet exemplifies this case well. Anti Lockdown Alliance is a twitter account with over 14.7 thousand followers. They post news articles and studies that all support the idea that we should not, and never should have been in any sort of quarantine or lockdown. Here in this tweet, this account is showing support for a Canadian mosque that broke the law by holding large group religious services. I do not have a problem with personal opinions about existing laws, but when a platform like this with thousands of followers shows favor towards incidents like these we can understand how problems can arise from this. Many people with little trust in mainstream media will see tweets from accounts like these and feel encouraged to support breaking the law like this. Incidents like these can cause chain reactions where people think it is ok to put the health of others behind their selfish desires. Here is an example of large groups of people feeling compelled to break the law and potentially put their health at risk.
The second red flag I want to explore is social media pages that incite violence. While it is completely up to individuals to say violent things if they want, the problem arises when these individuals have large platforms with thousands of followers who could feel inspired by what they say. The tweet and video below are great examples of this. Covid misinformation pages often create a narrative that they are being oppressed by their governments and should sometimes resort to violence to protect their individual rights. This stems from scientific misinformation which I will explore in the next paragraph.
The last red flag that I want to talk about is the blatant spreading of psuedo-science and scientific misinformation. This might be the most important red flag because it lays the groundwork for the other aforementioned red flags. If a social media page is able to convince its followers that Covid is not real or practically harmless, it can convince them to break the law or get violent over Covid restrictions. An example I want to talk about comes from Jeffrey A Tucker who is an author with over 61 thousand followers. Tucker points toward a graph published by the CDC and claims that because restrictions have been lifted in Texas around the time when Covid cases are dropping, that lockdowns are completely ineffective measures for stopping transmission. At face value this can be a convincing argument since he does cite credible graphs and sources. However when diving deeper we realize that he is completely ignoring the effect vaccinations are having on Covid cases as well as general herd immunity. For people who largely ignore mainstream media and get their Covid information from pages such as this we can see how information like this can easily be believed and spread.
Make no mistake, once the pandemic ends and Covid becomes nothing more than the common cold pages like these will continue to proliferate. Pages like these stem not from opposition to lockdowns or masks, but instead stem from mistrust in the mainstream media. Pages like these serve to contradict what media outlets and the government say in matters other than just public health. It is important as users of social media that we stay diligent when misinformation and propaganda appears on our feed.
Anti-lockdown and anti-mask social media pages use pseudo-science to convince its followers to oppose everything the mainstream media and government institutions say. This can lead to breaking the law and violent incidents as we have explored here. This story is not here to give a platform to these propaganda pages but to teach all of you how to spot the red flags and ignore them accordingly. My hope is that I have helped all of you navigate social media more safely.
