The document discusses communicating risk during the COVID-19 pandemic in a post-truth world. It notes that COVID-19 poses uncertain risks that are invisible until symptoms appear. This uncertainty has led to both hysteria and indifference in societies. The document examines how governments can maintain public trust while requiring profound behavior changes. It analyzes the spread of misinformation related to COVID-19 and discusses potential solutions like education, supporting quality journalism, regulating tech platforms and advertisers, as well as monitoring from intelligence agencies. The biggest challenges are addressing psychological biases, political deception, and how emotion and engagement drive the spread of misinformation on social media.

1. COVID-19: How can we
communicate risk in a
post-truth world?
Prof. Vian Bakir, Bangor University
XXXII Meeting of Philosophy and Theory of Human Sciences,
Philosophy Department, Unesp/Brazil,
Oct 26, 2020

2. COVID-19 – a global risk issue
suffused with uncertainty
• Induce systematic, often irreversible
harm. (death)
• Remain invisible, seem unreal until
symptoms manifest
• Based on causal interpretations by
experts.
• Inadequate foundation of knowledge
knowledge
• Society is uninsured.
"Where everything turns into a hazard,
somehow nothing is dangerous anymore.“

3. “The risk
society
shifts from
hysteria to
indifference
and vice
versa."
HYSTERIA INDIFFERENCE

4. Q: How do governments
get people to comply
with profound behaviour
change while
maintaining public trust
in a risk issue full of
uncertainty in a post-
truth universe?
‘post-truth’ - ‘relating to or
denoting circumstances in which
objective facts are less influential in
shaping public opinion than appeals
to emotion and personal belief’
(Oxford Dictionaries 2016).

5. How do people react when living with
uncertainty?
Uncertainty is strongly related
to information seeking, esp. re.
health information
• April 2020 - big increase in news consumption for
MSM (esp. TV news) & online in 6 countries
• UK, USA, Germany, Spain, South Korea, Argentina
• Trust in mainstream media > twice that for social
networks, video platforms or messaging services
• News media:
• helped ordinary people understand extent of
crisis (60%)
• made clear what people can do personally to
mitigate impact (65%)
Reuters Institute Digital News report 2020.

6. When health information is
novel/contradictory, people feel more
uncertain & decreasingly trust
scientists issuing this competing
information
When health messages are
ambiguous, people are less likely to
change behaviour

7. infodemic
• mid-Feb 2020
• WHO announced a COVID-19 massive “infodemic”
• ‘an over-abundance of information – some accurate
and some not – that makes it hard for people to find
trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they
need it’

8. Is COVID-19
false info more
problematic
than usual?
• 25% of 673 English language
tweets trending with COVID-19
terms/hashtags on Feb 27 2020,
included false info (Kouzy et al.
2020)
• Ofcom’s weekly UK surveys
(Mar-May 2020) finds > one
third saw misleading info
• By mid April 2020, one third of
people in Argentina, Germany,
S.Korea, Spain, UK, US said they
have seen ‘a great deal’ of false/
misleading COVID-19 info online
(Reuters Institute Digital News
report 2020)
Normally, false info is a small amount of overall info in deep echo chambers
e.g. with older people & conspiracy theorists
Engagement with false info has gone down on social media platforms (2016-18)–
but interaction with false content remains high

9. most common pieces of false COVID-19 info
• comparing COVID-19 to flu
• heat kills COVID-19
• home remedies
• COVID-19 origin
• conspiracy theories that it is a bioweapon,
• the culprit is Chinese government, US
government, liberal media, Bill Gates, 5G …
• vaccine development
• a vaccine exists & is either publicly available
or being hidden by government
• vaccine will give you the disease
• governments will impose forced mass
vaccination & nano-chip implantation for social
control
COVID-19 is a hoax to cover up 5G deaths (Facebook
post)
After the pandemic, a global vaccination program with
toxins and DNA-altering proteins may be forced upon the
surviving population (Journal of New Eastern Outlook)
The coronavirus pandemic may be used to introduce
absolute social control through a vaccine (Strategic
Culture Foundation)
COVID-19 will allow total control of the population
through forced vaccination and chips (NewsFront
Spanish)
(EUvsDISINFO 2020)

10. 5G conspiracy
& COVID-19 -
common in UK

11. In Brazil

12. In Australia

14. Citizens worldwide are concerned about disinformation
Highest concern in countries with:
• High social media usage
• Polarised political situations
• Elections affected by false information
• Weak traditional institutions e.g. media
2018
Highest concern in:
• Brazil (85%)
• Spain (69%)
• USA (64%)
2020
Highest concern in:
• Brazil (84%)
• Kenya (76%)
• South Africa (72%)
Reuters institute digital news report 2020.
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files
/2020-06/DNR_2020_FINAL.pdf
Reuters institute digital news report 2018.
media.digitalnewsreport.org/wp-
content/uploads/2018/06/digital-news-report-
2018.pdf?x89475

15. Can we move
from post-truth,
back to truth?

16. Solutions? Coercive responses
• Fake News Laws:
• Bangladesh, Belarus, Burkina Faso,
Cambodia, China, Egypt, France,
Germany, Israel, Kenya, Malaysia,
Myanmar, Singapore, Sri Lanka,
Taiwan, Thailand, USA, Vietnam
• shut down internet:
• India, Sri Lanka
• arrests:
• Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin,
Cambodia, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt,
Indonesia, Italy, Myanmar, Rwanda,
Thailand
Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index 2020

17. https://www.meccsa.org.uk/nl/three-d-issue-28-combatting-fake-news-analysis-of-
submissions-to-the-fake-news-inquiry/
Solutions –
non-coercive
• Education
• to increase people’s digital literacy to recognise disinformation & their own
confirmation biases;
• Media organisations
• to promote a pluralistic media economy so that quality news outlets flourish;
• to encourage journalists to tell the truth & be transparent about their
sources;
• Digital platforms e.g. Google, Facebook
• to divert funds from their digital ad revenue streams to support financially
struggling news outlets;
• to promote real news & downgrade fake news web sites;
• Advertisers
• to consider health of media landscape where Google and Facebook hold a
duopoly on digital advertising market;
• to ensure that behavioural advertising systems don’t incentivise fake news
creation;
• Intelligence agencies
• to monitor & block fake content
• Professional persuaders, PR and politicians
• to encourage or regulate political campaigning to avoid deception

18. big data
studies find :
• Deception spreads
further & faster than
truth on social media
• Emotion online is
contagious
• Emotive disinformation
developed in online
echo chambers also
infect mainstream news
• Vosoughi, S., D. Roy, and S. Aral. The
spread of true and false news online.
Science, 359(6380):11461151, 2018.
• Kramer, A.D.I., Guillory, J.E. and
Hancock, J.T. 2014. Experimental
evidence of massive-scale emotional
contagion through social networks,
Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, 111 (29): 8788–
90. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1320040111
• Benkler, Yochai , Faris, Robert ,
Roberts, Hal and Zuckerman, Ethan.
2017. Study: Breitbart-led right-wing
media ecosystem altered broader
media agenda. Columbia Journalism
Review.
https://www.cjr.org/analysis/breitbar
t-media-trump-harvard-study.php

19. Final thoughts.
Biggest areas to be tackled are:
• Citizens’ psychological biases e.g. need for
certainty, confirmation biases
• Political cultures of deception
• Social media cultures of emotion &
engagement as core currency