Welcome to 2020, where we’re fighting both a viral pandemic and a “disinfodemic”. And yes, social media companies say they “deplatform” obviously false theories. But there’s a loophole: if you wrap your bleach-gargling cure in a larger QAnon narrative about Satan-worshipping pedophiles, you might still get listed.
Over the last summer, Amsterdam Data Science (ADS) and Amsterdam Medical Data Science (AMDS) co-hosted a series of online lectures in collaboration with Elsevier and Google that explored ‘The Power and the Weakness of Data and Modelling in COVID-19’. And they saved the best for last: ‘COVID-19 and the Media’, for which I wrote a report thanks to EdenFrost and Amsterdam Economic Board.
Read the full report: ‘Media and the lies around COVID-19’
Dr. Marcel Becker from Radboud University argued we need to stop obsessing over defining “truth” and instead apply it as a verb: “truth finding”. After all, even judges and scientists approach truth differently – judges need verdicts with deadlines, while scientists cultivate “doubt and suspicion” as a never-ending story.
And it only gets messier: Throw social media and identity politics into the mix, and suddenly, scientific information looks identical to the conspiracy theories from your former colleague you just blocked on Facebook. “Fear spreads faster than the infection,” Becker notes, which explains why people hoard toilet paper while ignoring health advice.
Meanwhile, PhD researcher Emillie de Keulenaar discovered that social media platforms are playing a fascinating double game. Sure, Facebook and YouTube are “deplatforming” unproven theories like “COVID-19 is caused by 5G radiation.” But they’ve found a clever loophole: “borderline content” gets buried rather than banned. So, if you wrap your bleach-gargling cure in a larger QAnon narrative about Satan-worshipping paedophiles, congratulations – you might still get listed.
The solution? Scientists need to step up their storytelling game instead of hiding behind jargon. As Becker puts it, they should “use the narrative frame – tell stories as journalists have long done” and remember that “doubt is a virtue, not a shortcoming”.
As Dr Becker eloquently summarises: “YouTube can say the truth does not exist. But given the current situation of knowledge in the scientific community, we can still talk about bullshit and non-bullshit.”
Read the full report: ‘Media and the lies around COVID-19’
