A tsunami of fake news in Latin America and TikTok combats misinformation
Welcome new subscribers! It's great to see you here.
How are platforms responding to the COVID-19 pandemic? We are following updates on this issue every week. Today we're looking at efforts made by TikTok to address its misinformation problem. If you're wondering whether or not to wear a mask, and why smell tests are being proposed over temperature checks in some places, read our weekly round-up of COVID-19 highlights and news updates, brought to you by our in-house health expert, Dr. Seema Yasmin.
This week you can catch Meedanis at RightsCon Online 2020. We look at the how social media platforms can become record keepers of resistance and also share experiences of fact-checking health misinformation.
Your COVID-19 questions
Journalist and medical doctor, Dr. Seema Yasmin shares weekly highlights from Meedan's public health journalism tool, learnaboutcovid19.org.
Is it safe to wear a mask?
Dr. Seema says: "One hundred and one years ago, as Spanish flu spread throughout the world infecting 1 in 4 people, anti-mask leagues formed to fight city-wide mask ordinances in the US. These anti-mask leagues were also known as the “sanitary spartacans” and “mask slackers,” and they framed the wearing of masks as an infringement of civil liberties. A century later, in the grip of another global pandemic, masks are once again politicized and hotly contested. The question of mask safety is being raised because of anti-mask groups spreading disinformation, despite increasing evidence that even surgical and cloth masks can protect against the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19. Wearing a mask is safe. Surgeons and other healthcare professionals wear masks for extended periods of time, sometimes for longer than 10 hours at a time, without any negative impact on oxygen or carbon dioxide levels. Except for some people with serious breathing problems and for children under the age of 2 years, wearing a mask is an effective way of protecting against infection in those situations where being in proximity to other people cannot be avoided." (More information from our experts here)
What is the best metric (cases, deaths or hospitalizations) for measuring the level of infection in a community?
Dr. Seema says: "The most basic measure of an epidemic — the number of people newly infected with the virus — has become a politicized debate in the United States, one that is used to argue against increased testing. Officials have even described testing as a “double-edged sword,” and claimed that cases are soaring because of increasing testing. But two metrics debunk these claims: first, the U.S. is testing only 30-40% of the people it should be testing each day (around 750,000 tests are run daily, far below the national minimum target of 2 million tests a day). Second, while testing capacity is slowly increasing, the test positivity rate is soaring. The test positivity rate is the number of positive tests divided by the total number of tests. It serves as an important measure of community spread — the higher the test positivity rate, the more infection is spreading. The WHO says a test positivity rate of less than 5% is needed for a country or region to safely reopen. The US is currently at a test positive rate of 9% while Arizona’s positive rate is 24% and Texas, Georgia, and Florida are well above 13%. Deaths and hospitalizations add to our understanding of disease spread, with the latter being an important indicator of healthcare system capacity. Used in combination, test positivity rates, death rates and hospitalizations give a fuller picture of the magnitude of contagion in a region."
Why are smell tests being proposed over temperature checks at workplaces?
Dr. Seema says: "Fever checks can miss up to half of the people infected with a respiratory virus, according to studies of COVID-19 and SARS. Fever can be fleeting, can be masked by the use of certain medicines, and thermometers can be inaccurate. In the case of COVID-19, fever may be a less common symptom than previously understood, whereas loss of smell and taste might be better predictors of symptomatic infection. The best approach to finding cases, especially in a place like the US where testing capacity is far short of minimum targets, might be to combine measures such as temperature checks with smell checks, while keeping in mind that up to half of all infected people may not experience any symptoms at all." (More information from our experts here)
Top stories
TikTok has a misinformation problem—and is turning to popular creators for help (Fast Company)
You don’t have to look far to find various forms of misinformation on TikTok, from anti-vaxxers to people selling the flatly false claim that 5G networks cause coronavirus symptoms. You can also find plenty of pro-Trump accounts featuring the president spouting half-truths.
Now, TikTok is debuting a set of videos that aim to educate its users on how to recognize misinformation posted by other users, then refrain from sharing it. The campaign, called “Be Informed,” features a number of TikTok’s most popular video makers, who address topics such as how to scrutinize the credibility of the sources of TikTok videos, and how to distinguish fact from opinion.
“The series is meant to provide advice on how to evaluate content and use those skills to protect against incorrect or misleading information... so that at the end of the day they will really think about what they consume and what they create.”— Kudzi Chikumbu, TikTok’s Director of Creator Community
Tsunami of fake news hurts Latin America's effort to fight coronavirus (Nieman Lab)
More than 160,000 people have died from Mexico to Brazil, and social networks are awash with quack cures and conspiracies. Disseminators of online disinformation take advantage of pre-existing communities – such as church groups – and use them as a powerful mechanism through which to spread their lies. Some sought financial gain from their fabrications. Others used falsehoods for political purposes. Whatever the motivation, the spread of fake news in a time of coronavirus has real-life consequences.
"The problem is these are spread around by well-intentioned people in family WhatsApp chats probably because they can create a sense of control over a situation which is out of control." — Jorge Bruce, a Peruvian newspaper columnist and psychoanalyst
What’s new at Meedan
When Misinformation Spreads Faster Than A Pandemic
"Effective health communication in a pandemic requires systematic investments in health infrastructure and adequate training for academics and journalists." Read this blogpost on the rapid spread of misinformation in India, by Mohit Nair, a member of our team of COVID-19 public health experts.
Misinformation Research Highlights from ACL 2020
"Presented research on misinformation and fact-checking at ACL 2020 seems to be moving away from “automatic” misinformation detection towards addressing specific questions more in demand of journalists and fact-checkers." Read this blogpost by Ashkan Kazemi who's doing a summer internship at Meedan. Ashkan reports on the state of "Misinformation Research" at the Association of Computational Linguistics (ACL 2020) conference.
Meedan at RightsCon 2020 this week
Recordkeepers of the Resistance: Wednesday June 29, 2020
This session aims to ignite a conversation and mobilize the RightsCon community around the topic of corporate social media platforms becoming the de facto recordkeepers of activists’ history while there is still a lack of transparency regarding Big Tech’s content moderation policies.
When misinformation hurts our fundamental health rights: Wednesday June 29, 2020
The session will share experience from fact-checking initiatives and global health misinformation researchers from Full Fact, DataLEADS, the University of Lagos, and PesaCheck.