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Analyzing the social context of health information and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case of emerging inequities in Lebanon

With the far-reaching COVID-19 pandemic starting in December 2019, a surge of misinformation, now coined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as an ‘infodemic’, has also taken the world by storm. False information and variations in interpretations about the pandemic and mitigation interventions/st...

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Autores principales: Makhoul, Jihad, Kabakian-Khasholian, Tamar, Chaiban, Lea
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7820514/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33472532
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1757975920984178
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author Makhoul, Jihad
Kabakian-Khasholian, Tamar
Chaiban, Lea
author_facet Makhoul, Jihad
Kabakian-Khasholian, Tamar
Chaiban, Lea
author_sort Makhoul, Jihad
collection PubMed
description With the far-reaching COVID-19 pandemic starting in December 2019, a surge of misinformation, now coined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as an ‘infodemic’, has also taken the world by storm. False information and variations in interpretations about the pandemic and mitigation interventions/strategies continue to spread at a faster pace than the relevant scientific evidence. The WHO has called for a fight against this infodemic, describing it as the most contagious aspect of the pandemic. In this era of rapid information exchange, public health measures, and state interventions to control the pandemic, a contextual understanding of how information is communicated and shared is important for uncovering possible reasons for action or inaction by the general public. With the Lebanese state scrambling to implement and enforce different measures to control and mitigate the spread of COVID-19, adherence by the general public is not uniform. In this paper, we refer to social science and risk communication theory to discuss how the political, economic and social contexts in the country, and not only the content of the messages that people receive from officials, affect how they interpret and act on information. We highlight how this has played out in Lebanon and identify societal aspects of importance in a low-middle income country fraught with social, economic and political inequalities which continue to undermine the efforts to contain the spread. Implications to inform state response in the context of low-middle income countries are also discussed.
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spelling pubmed-78205142021-01-22 Analyzing the social context of health information and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case of emerging inequities in Lebanon Makhoul, Jihad Kabakian-Khasholian, Tamar Chaiban, Lea Glob Health Promot Original Articles With the far-reaching COVID-19 pandemic starting in December 2019, a surge of misinformation, now coined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as an ‘infodemic’, has also taken the world by storm. False information and variations in interpretations about the pandemic and mitigation interventions/strategies continue to spread at a faster pace than the relevant scientific evidence. The WHO has called for a fight against this infodemic, describing it as the most contagious aspect of the pandemic. In this era of rapid information exchange, public health measures, and state interventions to control the pandemic, a contextual understanding of how information is communicated and shared is important for uncovering possible reasons for action or inaction by the general public. With the Lebanese state scrambling to implement and enforce different measures to control and mitigate the spread of COVID-19, adherence by the general public is not uniform. In this paper, we refer to social science and risk communication theory to discuss how the political, economic and social contexts in the country, and not only the content of the messages that people receive from officials, affect how they interpret and act on information. We highlight how this has played out in Lebanon and identify societal aspects of importance in a low-middle income country fraught with social, economic and political inequalities which continue to undermine the efforts to contain the spread. Implications to inform state response in the context of low-middle income countries are also discussed. SAGE Publications 2021-01-21 2021-03 /pmc/articles/PMC7820514/ /pubmed/33472532 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1757975920984178 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Original Articles
Makhoul, Jihad
Kabakian-Khasholian, Tamar
Chaiban, Lea
Analyzing the social context of health information and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case of emerging inequities in Lebanon
title Analyzing the social context of health information and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case of emerging inequities in Lebanon
title_full Analyzing the social context of health information and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case of emerging inequities in Lebanon
title_fullStr Analyzing the social context of health information and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case of emerging inequities in Lebanon
title_full_unstemmed Analyzing the social context of health information and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case of emerging inequities in Lebanon
title_short Analyzing the social context of health information and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case of emerging inequities in Lebanon
title_sort analyzing the social context of health information and misinformation during the covid-19 pandemic: a case of emerging inequities in lebanon
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7820514/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33472532
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1757975920984178
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