A media literate Gen Z and climate misinformation on Facebook
Facebook is building a unit for combatting climate misinformation, and Gen Z might be better at detecting false claims than previous generations. Catch all these news roundups and more, as well as information about COVID-19 transmission, treatments and myths with Dr. Seema Yasmin's highlights, in this week's newsletter.
A Check Global Network Event 🌍
Independent, Innovative & Feminist: Three Newsrooms Champion Access to Information
September 28th, 2020
10 AM ET/ 4 PM CET/ 7:30 PM Delhi/ 10 PM Manila
To observe the International Day for Universal Access to Information on September 28, Meedan is hosting an online event bringing together three independent media organisations ensuring editorial independence, plurality and diversity in their newsrooms while working in challenging regions and contexts. Join us in conversation with the women leading these organisations — Nora Younis (Al Manassa in Egypt), Maria Vitoria Ramos (Fiquem Sabendo in Brazil), and Disha Mullick (Khabar Lahariya in India).
Your COVID-19 questions
Journalist and medical doctor, Dr. Seema Yasmin shares weekly highlights from Meedan's public health journalism tool, learnaboutcovid19.org.
Does COVID-19 impact young people?
Dr. Seema says: "COVID-19 does impact young people and the language around susceptibility has often been ableist, presuming that young people are a monolith and that all young people are able bodied and not living with chronic disease. Some young people have underlying health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, asthma or obesity, which increases their vulnerability to severe infection. While it’s rare that a young person with COVID-19 is sick enough to go to the hospital, 1 in 3 children hospitalized with COVID-19 requires care in the ICU. Beyond the health impacts of COVID-19 on young people, there are economic and educational consequences caused by the pandemic which may continue to manifest for years to come." (Read more on what our experts say here)
Does the antibiotic Levotop 500 treat, prevent or cure COVID-19?
Dr. Seema says: "Antibiotics treat bacterial infections, and since COVID-19 is caused by a virus, antibiotics such as Levotop (the brand name for levofloxacin) can’t treat the illness. But viral infections sometimes invite secondary infections and these can be bacterial. For example, most of the 50 million people who died during the Spanish flu pandemic did not die from flu but from a secondary lung infection caused by bacteria. (The first antibiotic, penicillin, was not widely available until 1945, more than two decades after the pandemic was over.) It’s because of these secondary bacterial infections that antibiotics have been tested in combination with antivirals in clinical trials for COVID-19, because while they can’t directly treat the viral infection, antibiotics can help fight the secondary bacterial infections that some people with COVID-19 develop." (Read more on what our experts say here)
Does holding your breath for 10 seconds or more without coughing or feeling discomfort mean you are free from COVID-19?
Dr. Seema says: "Absent widespread availability of testing for COVID-19 in some countries (as well as long test turnaround times), people are seeking different ways to diagnose COVID-19, and to distinguish the disease from other ailments such as allergies, the flu and the common cold. But breath holding cannot diagnose COVID-19 or any other respiratory disease - only a test can. It’s important to debunk widely circulating myths about home diagnoses because they might cause some to presume they do not have COVID-19 when they are in fact infectious. This is especially important in the context of the pandemic where up to 40% of infections can be traced back to a person who spread the virus while feeling healthy and suffering no symptoms." (Read more on what our experts say here)
Top stories
Gen Z is eroding the power of misinformation (Axios)
Gen Z may be more immune to the lure of misinformation because younger people apply more context, nuance and skepticism to their online information consumption, experts and new polling suggests. 83% of Gen Z college students said they get the majority of their news from social media or online news sites, according to a new survey from polling firm College Reaction of 868 students provided exclusively to Axios, but despite it being their go-to source for news, young people are skeptical of social media. Just 7% said they found it to be the most trustworthy news platform.
“Misinformation and fake news won't go away with the next generation, experts said. But it will be far better understood. Most misinformation is just "influence and agenda-driven communications that older generations don’t understand," Jonathon Morgan, said CEO of AI software company Yonder." - Stef Kight, Axios
Facebook's new climate center won't solve its misinformation problem (Vanity Fair)
Facebook on Tuesday announced it is establishing an online information center for climate change. It will look similar to the company’s COVID information center—attempting to target misinformation and provide hard scientific facts about the climate crisis.
Eric Lutz writes that, "As with some of the social media giant’s recent initiatives, the move is a step in the right direction that hardly goes far enough to address the full scope of the problem."
"The company has been sharply criticized for its handling of misleading and false content related to global warming, with hard science more or less lumped together with lies, industry statements, and conspiracy theories. In an apparent effort to address the issue, or at least to get critics off its back as devastating natural disasters across the United States bring the climate threat to the fore, Facebook announced it is adding to its platform a hub of reliable, fact-based information about climate science. “Climate change is real,” the company said in a statement. “The science is unambiguous and the need to act grows more urgent by the day. As a global company that connects more than 3 billion people across our apps every month, we understand the responsibility Facebook has and we want to make a real difference.'" — Eric Lutz, Vanity Fair