Let’s finish up our work together by looking at misinformation, disinformation and some ways to proactively address it. Please complete the following: 1. Click on the hyperlink below and read (or listen to) the following article entitled, “Why the Elderly Are More Susceptible to Social Media Misinformation.” https://m.thewire.in/article/tech/elderly-social-media-misinformation-covid-19
Though a problem that has existed for a while, misinformation spiralled to new heights during the second wave of COVID-19. The Wire
2. Now that you have read this, consider the definitions of mis- and disinformation as explained by Dr. Kate Starbird, Associate Professor at Washington University, in the proceedings of a 2020 workshop entitled, Addressing Health Misinformation with Health Literacy Strategies: Starbird noted that the distinction between misinformation and disinformation is “really important when we think about strategies for addressing false information, online or elsewhere.” The definitions are still in development as is the field of disinformation studies itself, she added, but misinformation is presently understood by most as “false information that is not intentionally false,” whereas disinformation is “false or misleading information spread with some kind of intent—usually political, reputational, or financial.” Disinformation, she continued, is not just one piece of information: It is part of a campaign or a set of different narratives, frequently with a factual or a plausible core wrapped in layers of false information or removed from its original context. “It is not as simple as saying that piece of information is true or false,” she said, “but considering why it is being spread now, who is spreading it, and what is the intent for spreading it. That makes the challenge of identifying disinformation and removing malicious information a much different task than fact checking something as being true or false.” “Misinformation doesn’t spread itself,” Starbird said. “We spread it — ‘we’ being ‘everybody who participates in information spaces.’ And we, as humans, are particularly vulnerable to spreading misinformation during crises events like pandemics, due to the uncertainty of the information space” and anxieties borne out of that vacuum. Source: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020.
Addressing Health Misinformation with Health Literacy Strategies: Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26021
3. Present one additional information- Misinformation, and – Disinformation For each definition, include the full hyperlink of your source (it can be the same – or different – source for each term above). How to address misinformation and disinformation is still very much evolving! The Office of the U.S. Surgeon General has developed and disseminated a toolkit for doing so.
4. Copy and paste the following link into your browser and read through the entirety of the toolkit. (It is meant for everybody! This means that it is user-friendly and written with health literacy in mind.) https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/health-misinformation-toolkit-english.pdf
5. Once you have read through the toolkit, complete the following: a. Share five take-aways from the U.S. Surgeon General’s Toolkit. Each take away you make will be a conclusion you’ve reached or a key message that you learned from reading the Toolkit. b.