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A Stanford Conference on Social Media, Ethics, and COVID-19 Misinformation (INFODEMIC): Qualitative Thematic Analysis

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic continues to challenge the world’s population, with approximately 266 million cases and 5 million deaths to date. COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation led to vaccine hesitancy among the public, particularly in vulnerable communities, which persists today. Soci...

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Autores principales: Gisondi, Michael A, Chambers, Daniel, La, Tatum Minh, Ryan, Alexa, Shankar, Adyant, Xue, Athena, Barber, Rachel Anne
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8849255/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35030089
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/35707
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author Gisondi, Michael A
Chambers, Daniel
La, Tatum Minh
Ryan, Alexa
Shankar, Adyant
Xue, Athena
Barber, Rachel Anne
author_facet Gisondi, Michael A
Chambers, Daniel
La, Tatum Minh
Ryan, Alexa
Shankar, Adyant
Xue, Athena
Barber, Rachel Anne
author_sort Gisondi, Michael A
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic continues to challenge the world’s population, with approximately 266 million cases and 5 million deaths to date. COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation led to vaccine hesitancy among the public, particularly in vulnerable communities, which persists today. Social media companies are attempting to curb the ongoing spread of an overwhelming amount of COVID-19 misinformation on their platforms. In response to this problem, the authors hosted INFODEMIC: A Stanford Conference on Social Media and COVID-19 Misinformation (INFODEMIC) to develop best practices for social media companies to mitigate online misinformation and disinformation. OBJECTIVE: The primary aim of this study was to develop recommendations for social media companies to address the COVID-19 infodemic. We report the methods used to execute the INFODEMIC conference, conference attendee engagement and analytics, and a qualitative thematic analysis of the conference presentations. The primary study outcomes were the identified themes and corresponding recommendations. METHODS: Using a constructivist paradigm, we conducted a thematic analysis of the 6-hour conference transcript to develop best practice recommendations. The INFODEMIC conference was the study intervention, the conference speakers were the study participants, and transcripts of their presentations were the data for this study. We followed the 6-step framework for thematic analysis described by Braun and Clarke. We also used descriptive statistics to report measures of conference engagement including registrations, viewership, post-conference asynchronous participation, and conference evaluations. RESULTS: A total of 26 participants spoke at the virtual conference and represented a wide array of occupations, expertise, and countries of origin. From their remarks, we identified 18 response categories and 4 themes: trust, equity, social media practices, and interorganizational partnerships. From these, a total of 16 best practice recommendations were formulated for social media companies, health care organizations, and the general public. These recommendations focused on rebuilding trust in science and medicine among certain communities, redesigning social media platforms and algorithms to reduce the spread of misinformation, improving partnerships between key stakeholders, and educating the public to critically analyze online information. Of the 1090 conference registrants, 587 (53.9%) attended the live conference, and another 9996 individuals viewed or listened to the conference recordings asynchronously. Conference evaluations averaged 8.9 (best=10). CONCLUSIONS: Social media companies play a significant role in the COVID-19 infodemic and should adopt evidence-based measures to mitigate misinformation on their platforms.
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spelling pubmed-88492552022-03-10 A Stanford Conference on Social Media, Ethics, and COVID-19 Misinformation (INFODEMIC): Qualitative Thematic Analysis Gisondi, Michael A Chambers, Daniel La, Tatum Minh Ryan, Alexa Shankar, Adyant Xue, Athena Barber, Rachel Anne J Med Internet Res Original Paper BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic continues to challenge the world’s population, with approximately 266 million cases and 5 million deaths to date. COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation led to vaccine hesitancy among the public, particularly in vulnerable communities, which persists today. Social media companies are attempting to curb the ongoing spread of an overwhelming amount of COVID-19 misinformation on their platforms. In response to this problem, the authors hosted INFODEMIC: A Stanford Conference on Social Media and COVID-19 Misinformation (INFODEMIC) to develop best practices for social media companies to mitigate online misinformation and disinformation. OBJECTIVE: The primary aim of this study was to develop recommendations for social media companies to address the COVID-19 infodemic. We report the methods used to execute the INFODEMIC conference, conference attendee engagement and analytics, and a qualitative thematic analysis of the conference presentations. The primary study outcomes were the identified themes and corresponding recommendations. METHODS: Using a constructivist paradigm, we conducted a thematic analysis of the 6-hour conference transcript to develop best practice recommendations. The INFODEMIC conference was the study intervention, the conference speakers were the study participants, and transcripts of their presentations were the data for this study. We followed the 6-step framework for thematic analysis described by Braun and Clarke. We also used descriptive statistics to report measures of conference engagement including registrations, viewership, post-conference asynchronous participation, and conference evaluations. RESULTS: A total of 26 participants spoke at the virtual conference and represented a wide array of occupations, expertise, and countries of origin. From their remarks, we identified 18 response categories and 4 themes: trust, equity, social media practices, and interorganizational partnerships. From these, a total of 16 best practice recommendations were formulated for social media companies, health care organizations, and the general public. These recommendations focused on rebuilding trust in science and medicine among certain communities, redesigning social media platforms and algorithms to reduce the spread of misinformation, improving partnerships between key stakeholders, and educating the public to critically analyze online information. Of the 1090 conference registrants, 587 (53.9%) attended the live conference, and another 9996 individuals viewed or listened to the conference recordings asynchronously. Conference evaluations averaged 8.9 (best=10). CONCLUSIONS: Social media companies play a significant role in the COVID-19 infodemic and should adopt evidence-based measures to mitigate misinformation on their platforms. JMIR Publications 2022-02-15 /pmc/articles/PMC8849255/ /pubmed/35030089 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/35707 Text en ©Michael A Gisondi, Daniel Chambers, Tatum Minh La, Alexa Ryan, Adyant Shankar, Athena Xue, Rachel Anne Barber. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (https://www.jmir.org), 15.02.2022. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Gisondi, Michael A
Chambers, Daniel
La, Tatum Minh
Ryan, Alexa
Shankar, Adyant
Xue, Athena
Barber, Rachel Anne
A Stanford Conference on Social Media, Ethics, and COVID-19 Misinformation (INFODEMIC): Qualitative Thematic Analysis
title A Stanford Conference on Social Media, Ethics, and COVID-19 Misinformation (INFODEMIC): Qualitative Thematic Analysis
title_full A Stanford Conference on Social Media, Ethics, and COVID-19 Misinformation (INFODEMIC): Qualitative Thematic Analysis
title_fullStr A Stanford Conference on Social Media, Ethics, and COVID-19 Misinformation (INFODEMIC): Qualitative Thematic Analysis
title_full_unstemmed A Stanford Conference on Social Media, Ethics, and COVID-19 Misinformation (INFODEMIC): Qualitative Thematic Analysis
title_short A Stanford Conference on Social Media, Ethics, and COVID-19 Misinformation (INFODEMIC): Qualitative Thematic Analysis
title_sort stanford conference on social media, ethics, and covid-19 misinformation (infodemic): qualitative thematic analysis
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8849255/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35030089
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/35707
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