UNGA President calls to Fight “Infodemic”

Infodemic is a combination of Information and Epidemic. It refers to the spread of large-scale information about an epidemic among the public.

Key Points

  • The spread of information about the epidemic is generally rapid and the information may be both accurate and inaccurate.
  • Eventually, it leads to the prevalence of facts and rumors among the people which inhibits them to understand the reality and root cause.
  • The word ‘Infodemic’ was first coined in the year 2003 and has gained much popularity during the COVID pandemic.
  • Since an excessive quantum of unreliable information is available during a pandemic, achievement of solution to the problem becomes difficult for common public.
  • Media and Social media platforms can play an important role in helping to fight this problem of infodemic.

UNGA Presidents calls for fighting against “Infodemic”

  • The United Nations General Assembly President has urged to come up with joint efforts to fight against the menace of disinformation and misinformation against the pandemic- “Infodemic”.
  • He called upon to fight against the infodemic in a virtual event organized by the permanent mission of Australia to the United Nations, along with the permanent missions of India, France, Latvia, and Indonesia for sharing best practices for responding to infodemic.

Campaigns for Misinformation against pandemic or ‘Infodemic’

Before this also, many campaigns have been conducted for fighting against the misinformation related to COVID-19 and vaccines. Recently, the United Nations started the “Team Halo” initiative wherein more 100 scientists joined to platform to tackle against the misinformation related to COVID-19 pandemic. Another such campaign was “Stop the Spread” started by the United Kingdom and the World Health Organisation to tackling the problem of myths and misinformation related to the pandemic. UN Secretary- General also launched the United Nations Communications Response initiative in April 2020. The World Health Assembly passed a resolution in May 2020 for managing infodemic.