| Title: |
Social Media and Crisis of Misinformation and Disinformation Management in Covid-19 Era: Towards A New Model of Health Crisis Communication |
| Author(s): |
Eberechukwu Gloria Nwodu, Nonye Benedeth Ezeaka & Chika Thonia Ezeali |
| Abstract: |
Social media is awash with avalanche of information on Covid-19 pandemic from a variety of unverifiable or questionable sources. Unfortunately, a greater percentage of this information is misleading and mere falsehood, thereby leading to a crisis of 'information validity-credibility syndrome'. Knowingly or unknowingly, these misleading and dangerous social media posts are shared in both celebrities' and social media influencers' handles thereby amplifying the spread of misinformation and disinformation in the public domain. These have negatively impacted genuine information processing and use by some categories of the citizens who rely on social media for 'infomedics' and news on the pandemic. Studies exist on social media and Covid-19 pandemic, but factors such as information validity, source credibility, trust
and messaging channels appears under explored in handling or mitigating social media misinformation and disinformation crisis. This study was informed by these knowledge gaps and intends to conceptually and empirically explore the identified factors in tackling or managing social media misinformation and disinformation challenges in the post Covid-19 pandemic era. Objectives of the study includes to ascertain how the above factors impact information processing and use by recipients; ascertain how ‘information source credibility’ reduces social media
disinformation; and to propose health crisis communication model for managing misinformation/disinformation in post-COVID-19 era. 392 randomly selected active social media users were selected in the execution of the study. Both quantitative and qualitative data was used in pursuing the objectives of the study. |
| Keywords: |
Social media, Crisis communication, Validity–credibility syndrome
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