SOCIAL MEDIA: Boon or Curse IN TIMES OF PANDEMIC?

By Rudrani Ghosh

With 2.5 billion Google search options, COVID has become the most popular disease in the digital space. And social media is further enabling the infodemic. Rudrani Ghosh delves into its good-side and flip-side.

Empty lanes, eerily silent malls, the familiar yet unfamiliar maze which lay silent beneath no boots at all, dark shopfronts — it seems Covid-19 has turned cities to ghost towns.

The impact of social media on one hand as a major source of news and on the other as the domain where misinformation cannot be ignored. In the middle of Corona epidemic lockdown, social media is acting as the new valence for the foundation of our everyday life. Be it a vital link between friends, families or colleagues or a much needed entertainment. But the dilemma that often creeps in our mind in a time of pandemic crisis is whether we should be faithful to social media to obtain information or disregard its role to combat infodemic.

Let’s put on the time-travel shoes and fly back to 1720, the year of The Great Plague of Marseille or 1820, the year of the Cholera outbreak or 1920, the year of the Spanish Flu Epidemic. If we compare these pandemics with Covid-19, one distinctive feature we will notice in case of the Covid-19 pandemic is how digital platforms play an important role in broadcasting information including the treatment protocols and prevention strategies— thus connecting the quarantined people amidst unconnected geographies. But in this flooding of information age where humans are sharing photos, videos and texts beyond diversity and devices, social media has turned out to be a bigger vehicle of exaggeration, propaganda and falsehood which often results in social unrest and anxiety.

The Propagation of Social Distancing and 20 secs Hand-washing

The sanguine panorama of social media lies in its usefulness in a time when all of us are otherwise introduced to the new concept called social distancing. When the coronavirus has wired us, social media help us steer the crisis, says Jeff Hancock, a professor of communication at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Social Media Lab. In reflecting how society is thinking and reacting to the crisis, “Hancock says, social media is allowing society to sort of talk its way through what is an unprecedented kind of threat.” Scientists and public health experts are also using social media to directly connect and interact with the public or discuss the new emerging research, while community leaders are making use of it to form volunteer networks to help vulnerable face the pandemic crisis. Social media has successfully shared general useful information disseminated by health officials and organizations and popularized certain terms like: social distancing, washing hands for 20 seconds, but on the other hand it has triggered human beings with various fear coming from all direction.

Sensationalisation: Not always harmful

However, experts often believe that a healthy dose of fear created by social media is essential and adds to benefit during a pandemic. According to Khudejah Ali, a fake news and disease communication researcher, public health officials should design health-risk messages during outbreaks. She found that “a moderate level of fear-arousing sensationalism” in such messages could enhance user engagement. She points out that such messages at times serves as an important tool for people to “protect themselves or diagnose symptoms” which help them to prepare and stay safe. Often, people term anxiety to be a negative thing but sometimes it acts like the appropriate response which depicts the fact that people are now paying more attention. As Hancock mentions, “Social media allows society to sort of talk its way through what is an unprecedented kind of threat.” As the digit of coronavirus cases continues to rise, so our need to talk about it on social media increases.

In the Age of Infodemic

As the virus unmasks the power of social media, it is evident that that sentiment surrounding coronavirus posts is mostly negative. In fighting with the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) is also worried about combating infodemic. What started off as an information disseminator slowly ended up spreading rumors, disinformation and falsehood thus creating fears in the mind of people across the world. Social media is actually changing the way society is perceiving and responding to the COVID-19 outbreak.

It is evident from the people’s search history. Google searches of COVID-19 is 2.75 billion as contrast to 50-year old disease like AIDS which is 1.51 billion.

The Panic Button

Beyond serving as a domain or community forum, social media plays an important role in contributing to social unrest and anxiety. As Dr. Rahul Medakkar, the CEO of Continental Hospital, has rightly said, “Social Media is possibly the most powerful tool to unite people together,” however on the alternate side, it provides “excessive non-validated information” which in turn leads to misinform the consumers and “hence make them confused.” For instance, people take cues from amplified dramatic headlines and they often hit panic button which in turn results in panic-hoarding as we could see how the supplies of food and medical items have flown off to shelves resulting in increase of sales by 15-45% depending on the category.

Fake News, Courtesy of Social Media University

In an article Sonali Gupta, a Mumbai based psychologist stated that “with social media, the flight-fight-freeze mechanism of the human brain is always on.” The unwarranted misinformation shared via “social media university” creates a situation of panic and fear around the people which seems to produce more pain than gain. Although the other pandemics like Zika, Ebola, Swine Flu, H1N1 have sabotaged a lot, yet their implications were felt not so heightened as COVID-19. For instance, it was circulated that AYUSH (India’s ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy) has been able to produce a sedative to calm COVID-19 which created a sensationalism, until it was debunked as a fake and unproven claim.

Little Ignorance can be Blissful

Research shows that 45% of world’s population seems to use smart phones and in one day an individual seems to pick his phone over 2500 times.

According to Mrs Chital Naresh, the Quality Manager of Tata Memorial Centre (ACTREC) “To unravel the nail biting truth, people seem to be living in a virtual world. They don’t have time to interact with their family and friends.” The pouring of information from known and unknown sources via social media outlet and mainstream media (like television, radio) paves way to a loud chatter in the head which gets louder with every passing day. Being in a lockdown can be very stressful as it causes stress and mental health issues.

Be concerned but don’t Panic

With so much social media and news sites coverage related to Covid-19 around the world, it is evident that coronavirus is the first global pandemic that is unfurling in such an unprecedented way. In an age where misinformation and exaggeration thrives, reading news properly becomes a challenge. The panic and anxiety being fanned by the falsehood and exaggeration of social media is almost like Chinese whispers which creates a sense of paranoia among listeners. Thus it becomes very important to approach news and topics floating around social media with caution. All the governing bodies and organizations are present in social media and people should get the news from them and not focus on the sensationalized headlines of social media. As Mrs. Naresh believes that to beat the heat and refresh relations, we should consider social distancing from social media to prevent the covert relationships.

“I fear the day when technology will surpass human interaction and the world will have a generation of idiots.” — Albert Einstein