Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Dec 8, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Dec 8, 2021 - Dec 17, 2021
Date Accepted: Jan 6, 2022
Date Submitted to PubMed: Jan 10, 2022
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
A Deadly Infodemic: Social Media and the Power of COVID-19 Misinformation
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 is currently the third leading cause of death in the United States and unvaccinated people continue to die in high numbers. Vaccine hesitancy and vaccine refusal are fueled by COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms. This online ‘COVID-19 Infodemic’ has deadly consequences. In this editorial, the authors examine the roles that social media companies play in The COVID-19 Infodemic and their obligations to end it. They describe how ‘fake news’ about the virus developed on social media and acknowledge the initially muted response by the scientific community to counteract misinformation. The authors then challenge social media companies to better mitigate The COVID-19 Infodemic, describing legal and ethical imperatives to do so. They close with recommendations for better partnerships with community influencers and implementation scientists, and they provide next steps for all readers to consider. This guest editorial accompanies the JMIR special theme issue, “Social Media, Ethics, and COVID-19 Misinformation.”
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.