In the new Big Data & Society Special Theme “Studying the COVID-19 Infodemic at Scale”, we see this rapid circulation of both correct and misinformation related to Covid-19 and other health issues as infodemic. Our editors, Anatoliy Gruzd, Manlio De Domenico, Pier Luigi Sacco, Sylvie Briand, offer cutting-edge approaches to studying the effects, strategies and challenges associated with the emergent infodemic. They have sought to open up a space for investigating and discussing this phenomenon by selecting six research articles and four commentaries from six countries (see more details here).
Our editors have extended the discussion of the Covid-19 infodemic by initiating a Guest Speaker Series with the Social Media Lab at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University from Oct 7th to Nov 19th. The talks are:
- Oct 7 (Thu) 2 pm. Kai-Cheng
Yang, Observatory on Social Media, Indiana University, The COVID-19
Infodemic: Twitter versus Facebook
- Oct 21 (Thu), 2 pm. Mark
Green, Department of Geography & Planning, University of Liverpool. Identifying
how COVID-19-related misinformation reacts to the announcement of the UK
national lockdown: An interrupted time-series study
- Oct 28 (Thu), 2 pm. Jon
Roozenbeek, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge. Towards
psychological herd immunity: Cross-cultural evidence for two prebunking
interventions against COVID-19 misinformation
- Nov 4 (Thu), 2 pm. Kacper
Gradon, Department of Security and Crime Science, University College London.
Countering misinformation: A multidisciplinary approach
- Nov 11 (Thu), 2 pm. Michael
Robert Haupt, Department of Cognitive Science, University of California San
Diego. Identifying and characterizing scientific authority-related
misinformation discourse about hydroxychloroquine on twitter using unsupervised
machine learning
- Nov 19 (Fri) 2 pm. Paola
Pascual-Ferrá, Department of Communication, Loyola University Maryland.
Toxicity and verbal aggression on social media: Polarized discourse on wearing
face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic
If you wish to attend this event in real-time, please register here in order receive a Google Meet access link to each talk. All talks are recorded and available to access (after the real-time event) via the same webpage.
Everyone is welcome to join the Guest Talk Series. The guest talks will focus on the questions:
1) what are the benefits and challenges of detecting and combating the spread of Covid-19 misinformation on social media?
2) how can the digital method of data-tracing function as a useful methodology to examine and mitigate the risks that an infodemic could pose to individuals and society?
