Primary Submission Category: Non-health institutions (business, political, education systems)
Information without Trust, Knowledge without Institutions: What’s Missing in Infodemic Research
Authors: Douglas William Hanes
Presenting Author: Douglas William Hanes*
In February 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) began using the term “infodemic” to name and address the circulation of (mis)information about the then-nascent COVID-19 pandemic. Defining it as “an overabundance of information—some accurate and some not—that occurs during an epidemic”, the WHO adopted the term to identify, study, and address information during disease outbreaks. But, at the same time that infodemics are characterized by excessive amounts of information, the WHO also identifies “the absence of accurate, credible information” from trustworthy sources as part of the problem. This tension positions trust and mistrust at the center of the infodemic crisis: there is an excess of information, even as more good information is needed and trust can help steer people toward the latter. In this sense, we argue, trust is the articulation point between individuals as information-consumers and institutions as knowledge-generators and -disseminators. And, despite this centrality of trust to understanding and addressing infodemics, it remains undertheorized and understudied. This is especially glaring, given the larger decline in the public’s trust of major institutions, including political-representative bodies, the newsmedia, science, and medicine. This is, we posit, part of a larger shortcoming in infodemic research, namely, that it treats the problem of misinformation and mistrust without due attention to institutions and their history. Larger historical changes in institutions under neoliberalism have generated mistrust—often well-founded—in the public. This often-justified mistrust influences whether individuals trust those sources’ information and so accept it, or whether they will be susceptible to misinformation when exposed to it—or even seek out misinformation. What is needed, we conclude, is a more holistic approach, including larger policy guidelines to restore public control and trust over information-generating and -disseminating institutions.