The Elderman Trust Barometer survey conducted last month says people trust scientists and experts with domain knowledge to get information on coronavirus pandemic. Journalists and government officials were ranked least trust-worthy.
These findings were broadly reiterated by another survey conducted in six countries across four continents by Reuter’s Institute for Journalism Studies at Oxford.
Over 87% of the respondents in the survey reposed faith in information coming from scientist, doctors and health experts. While 60% trusted news organisations and only 41% trusted politicians.
Media’s credibility crisis is not a making of this global pandemic. Fake news has spawned the internet for a decade and more. Data farming to manipulate public opinion to achieve favourable electoral outcome is now an industry in the post-truth era.
The crisis was already there. The pandemic only brought the spotlight firmly on misinformation and dis-information mechanisms firmly etched in the worldwide communication ecosystems.
The cracks have been laid bare because people are anxious and concerned. Because stakes in the face of a killer pandemic are much higher. These are matters of life and death.
The virus is secular and non-discriminatory. And there is no cure available is sight. Ramping up preventive and supportive mechanisms is the next best thing to contain the spread.
And this is precisely where the devil sets in. If communication is the key in this battle against the invisible adversary, the choice of right words to educate people of dos and don’ts is of utmost importance.
This means drafting of the message and its tone and tenor could make or mar campaigns aimed to bring about short-term behavioural changes. Who says what, how, where and why can save or ruin lives and economy.
Otherwise, six months ago who would have given two hoots about something called Risk Communication in Public Health Emergency.
An absolute imperative in the face of a global pandemic of this proportion is trust and transparency. Trust between the state and the people. And transparency in information dissemination.
An article carried by Lancet last week underscores the follies of ignoring the importance of non-pharmaceutical interventions.
The spread of misinformation, ‘primarily fuelled by social media presents a pressing a public health challenge for Covid-19 control,’ it says.
It is important that people do not start gulping a drug synthesised to kill malarial parasite just because someone thinks it can. It is important political leadership both in deeds and actions get their messaging right.
Everyone who went about shaking hands in London may not be as lucky as Boris Johnson. Britain has just one Prime Minister, and he by all means should get access to the best healthcare available in the country.
Pandemic or no pandemic, virologists over the last one century have spent their lives studying ways and means to combat a contagion as stealthy as this one.
Similarly, communication scientists who have studied misinformation have been recommending anti-dotes to ‘infodemics’ of this enormity.
Inoculations, for instance, can be used to give necessary immunity both from the virus and misinformation.
The theory builds on the concept of vaccination. As weak or neutralised virus provides resistance to the disease, research shows mild exposure to weak form of misinformation can build resistance to ‘real misinformation’.
This can be done by giving explicit statutory warnings about possibility of being misled. And propounding counter arguments.
And empirical evidence shows it works. Because no one wants to be misled. Period.
This is just one of the many available tools to counter erroneous information. Responsibility is both on the legacy and the new media platforms to take corrective measures.
Vaccine to end this ‘infodemic’ has been available for long. One just needs the will to put it to good use.
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