The consumption of disinformation as a health crisis.

Abstract

Disinformation continues to wreak havoc on individuals, institutions and societies unabated. In public health, spreading false and misleading information1 related to coronavirus disease of 2019 has significantly affected the roll-out of vaccines.2 Fake news is often accompanied by hate posts and online threats encouraging extreme behavior resulting in deadly violence. The signs of the times call for governments and institutions to look at the impact of the consumption of disinformation on people’s health and create concrete steps beyond educational campaigns and fact-checking. Initially, the common understanding among academics and pundits is that the success of disinformation is an issue of lack of critical thinking and reflection.3 The solution was logically directed at education, information campaigns and fact-checking.4 Unfortunately, the problem remained because disinformation is not just an instructional or learning issue. What seems to have been largely ignored is how disinformation affects people’s thought processes, decision-making, behavior, tolerance for individual differences and well-being.5 The events of the attack on Capitol Hill6 in the USA in January 2021 and the killing of a former government official by a social media influencer in the Philippines7 in July 2022 are cases in point. Both events have tragically common characteristics: fake news, hate posts, online threats, deadly violence and justification of the violence. In these cases, extreme behavior is not only normalized, but it is also apparently celebrated online.8 Given all of these, it now appears that disinformation or, more specifically, its consumption is a public health issue in so much as it dramatically affects the wellbeing of individuals and social order.