Written by: Tosin Ajogbeje / Date: 05/05/20
As the spread of disinformation continues to rise among conspiracy theorists, feelings about unleashing fictitious facts remain questionable. Social media and digital sites are repeatedly storing and passing information that do not entertain true facts about the COVID-19 virus. Research claims that propaganda messages being passed across online channels evoke more rumours, conspiracies, misinformation, and downright lies. How else can people trust government initiatives if they believe the invisible virus was intentionally created?
According to Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd, “context collapse” which is usually attributed to the use of social media- highlighted how social media platforms consume messages that the user intended to be seen by one audience or a group in any given context, but ends up reaching a wider audience who were not the intended targets. While social media has created many opportunities, it has built a structure where individuals can freely express themselves without thinking about researching the actual facts of the information being distributed. Once information is posted online, people can either choose to believe or not believe, notwithstanding people will still interpret it and embrace the blame game. With a crashing economy, global pandemic, unceasing quarantine- the feelings of extreme anxiety and stress has further spurred more conspiracy beliefs.
Further conspiracy theories include:
· People continue to say that the virus was intentionally propagated by foreign powers like China, including Microsoft mastermind, Bill Gates who had predicted the pandemic in 2015 during a TED Talk titled “The next outbreak? We’re not ready.”
· Speculations still surround China’s involvement in creating coronavirus in a laboratory, which ended up escaping by accident. Again, people believe Bill Gates and the World Health Organization are working on some “evil takeover” to rule the world with vaccines.
· And then comes the continuous banter about how 5G technology helps transmit coronavirus to individuals. Many people shared details online about how 5G, which is mostly used in mobile phone networks and relies on signals carried by radio waves, is in some way responsible for coronavirus.
Without proper investigations, these theories and assumptions have been shared on various online platforms and social media. In the world of constructivism- we tend to conform to a certain idea and “construct” our own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things”. People tend to overanalyze things based on what they see or hear without seeing the bigger picture. We need to focus more on healing earth, living healthier lives and looking for innovative ways to avoid the next pandemic.
How did we get here?
Why didn’t we learn from the Bill Gates Ted-talk lecture, where he informed government to be ready for the next pandemic by having available diagnostics, drugs and a “healable” vaccine. Especially after the former global outbreak of Ebola in 2014, Bill Gates felt that was a good time to take the world more seriously and have an emergency preparedness plan in place. He felt conducting a more comprehensive vaccine research and training health workers would make the next pandemic easier to prepare for/anticipate. His insights were directed towards getting ready for the next pandemic and having the available resources to handle any situation that might arise.
Pandemics are naturally unavoidable, like dating back to the 1918 Spanish Flu, which infected one-third of the population. Research studies have claimed that the 1918 pandemic is very relevant today, and could serve as a key example to prevent a similar catastrophic outcome. Social distancing was an important measure back then. Having the necessary therapeutics for the Spanish Flu was important as well.
From this angle, it is unclear whether some drugs attributed to fight COVID-19 will cause more harm than good. The US Food and Drug Administration has made progress in authorizing the use of “Remdesivir”, an experimental antiviral drug as an emergency use to treat the virus. While this is a huge step, there are mixed views about the effectiveness of the drug as more research is needed to verify whether it should be used. As the search for the standard and “right” vaccine continues, I would say we should stay safe, stay creative, and most importantly stay strong.
References
Google stock photos; Dreamstime