Page 50 - B-iikm-21

Infodemic: Digital Destruction during COVID-19 Pandemic

Dr. Ravinder Kumar Chadha, former Additional Secretary, Parliament of India is presently engaged as
Professor at Malwanchal University. In addition, his current assignments include Adjunct Faculty at
Banasthali Vidyapeeth, member of Governing Board of INFLIBNET and Building Committees of Election
Commission and INFLIBNET. Dr. Chadha was member of Indian Delegation to WTO Parliamentary
Conference, Geneva 2014;Inter-Parliamentary Seminar for Asian Parliaments on ‘Preventing and Responding
to Violence against Women and Girls’2011 and Secretary to the Parliamentary Delegation to Iran.

The current wave of digital information disruption caused by mobile devices like phones, tabs, pads,
laptops and social media communication platforms (centrally managed and socially distributed) including

Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, Instagram, etc has also given birth to provision of “Fake news” and
“infodemic” which have played havoc on our mental models of sharing the information.

The term Infodemic was coined in 2003 but actual usage is seen during the current pandemic. The Oxford
English dictionary has defined Infodemic as “An excessive amount of information about a problem that

is typically unreliable, spreads rapidly, and makes a solution more difficult to achieve”. Infodemic is a
combination of two words “Information” and “epidemic”. It is primarily referred to quick and fast
spreading of both inaccurate and accurate information about a disease. Here rumours, data, facts,
fears,remedies and causes are so well mixed that it is almost impossible to extract the correct information
or data. We are practically facing tsunami of highly manipulated, misrepresented, manipulated,

hypothetical and coined information about COVID-19 and are being multiplied exponentially on the net.
Such a huge amount of information about pandemic which is typically unreliable/manipulated and
spreading rapidly is making solutions more and more difficult to achieve.

If one can hold the breath for 12 seconds without coughing you are not infected with COVID, wearing

face mask will cause accumulation of carbon dioxide around the nose, having ashvagandha, gilloy, tulsi
can protect you, Hydroxychloroquine is very effective medicine for COVID, virus can spread through
water also, in summer once temperature goes beyond 35C virus will die, 5G mobile network can transmit

virus, mosquitoes will also spread virus, drinking tea will kill virus in the body are examples of a few
statements related to COVID-19, which are being spread across the globe since last nine months. We do

regularly read about medicines which have proven highly effective on the COVID patients. The excessive
amount of information which is mostly incorrect is having lot of negative impact in dealing with problem
and suggesting correct solution.

As per Edelman Trust Barometer 2020 surveys conducted regarding Fake news about COVID-19
pandemic in India, France, Canada, Germany, Japan, S Korea, USA, UK and Saudi Arabia revealed that

67% of respondents agreed that there is lot of fake news being constantly spread about the pandemic.

50