INTRODUCTION

Since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the 2019 – 20 coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on 30 January 2020, and a pandemic on 11 March 2020, several countries around the world have put in place measures to combat the health crisis. Such measures included travel bans, restrictions on public movement and allowing trips only to buy food, medicines or other essential products. In such imposed, limited circumstances, people have been increasingly resorting to the Internet to socialise and to find therein reliable information about all aspects related to the outbreak, containment and fighting of the disease, as well personal hygiene advice. Social media platforms have long been an essential source for staying informed, but also for mis-and disinformation. The COVID-19 pandemic has only amplified this; it has been estimated that Internet traffic has increased by more than 70 per cent, which, at the same time, puts more pressure on the communications infrastructure around the world. As people are encountering a large volume of coronavirus-related material on social media platforms, the virus has provided sufficient grounds for a tsunami of misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories, among others.

In February 2020, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, referred to the combat against disinformation and related practices around COVID-19 and the pandemic as fighting an ‘infodemic’. This phenomenon has been described as an overabundance of information, rendering it difficult to find trustworthy sources thereof and to differentiate from falsehood, and to find reliable guidance. In other words, ‘infodemic’ is an uncontrolled propagation of highly socially dangerous information. The ‘infodemic’ is a specific challenge given that ‘fake news spreads faster and more easily than the virus, and it is just as dangerous.’ Cristina Tardáguila, Associate Director of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), has called COVID-19 ‘the biggest challenge fact-checkers have ever faced’. Other commentators have even argued that the pandemic has a far greater reach than the virus itself or that it is shaping up to be a mis-and disinformation problem of greater proportion than even the meddling that marked the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit referendum in the UK.