Why Disinformation Has Flourished During the Pandemic
AnonTechie writes:
https://phys.org/news/2022-05-disinformation-flourished-pandemic.html
A small team of researchers at Sony Computer Science Laboratories in France has explored why disinformation seemed to flourish during the global pandemic.
One of the more remarkable features of the global pandemic is the seemingly unceasing stream of misinformation attributed not just to the virus and the people who were being infected, but in the ways the medical community has responded to the threat. From ridiculous claims regarding supposed cures to the baseless claims made by anti-vaxxers, misinformation has flourished. In this new effort, the researchers wondered why this has been happening and they looked at the sources of news, both reliable and unreliable, as participants in a supply and demand news ecosystem.
[...] The researchers were not able to ascertain why the unreliable news sources were able to respond more quickly, but suggest that the end result was higher visibility for unreliable sources, leading to widespread disinformation gaining traction, and ultimately, acceptance.
[Journal Reference]: Pietro Gravino et al, The supply and demand of news during COVID-19 and assessment of questionable sources production, Nature Human Behaviour (2022)
DOI: DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01353-3
Do you agree with this assessment?
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.