In China an Invisible Army Fights Covid-19 Fake News
Ma Xiaohua
DATE:  Apr 01 2020
/ SOURCE:  yicai
In China an Invisible Army Fights Covid-19 Fake News In China an Invisible Army Fights Covid-19 Fake News

(Yicai Global) April 1 -- As the Covid-19 epidemic raged across China, behind the ground-level medical efforts there was an unseen legion of expert information providers supplying a steady stream of facts about the novel coronavirus outbreak and trying to stem the tide of fake news scaremongering among the public.

An emergency team of 2,953 members was set up by the Chinese Medical Doctor Association's Working Committee on Health Communication on Jan. 23 to disseminate accurate epidemic prevention and control information to China's 1.4 billion people to prevent panic and to assist in community-level disease prevention and control efforts.

Now, 60 days, 11,500 articles and 12 billion hits later, the team is preparing to down tools.

"The public urgently needed information about the outbreak," Liu Zhefeng, vice chairperson of the committee, told Yicai Global. "The timely, accurate and comprehensive disclosure of information can help to build up psychological endurance in the public and help them to think and behave more rationally.

"If information is not disclosed in time, people will leap to their own conclusions," he added. "If allowed to make their own choices about who and what to believe, this can lead to all kinds of gossip and adverse public opinion. It can even cause large-scale social hysteria."

Information can remove uncertainties, and the quicker it is delivered and the more fully it is communicated, the more effective it is in preventing society shifting from an "orderly" to "disorderly" state, he added.

Making the Complex Simple

"In the early stages of the epidemic, the quality of health information available was mixed," said Shi Linling, deputy chairwoman and secretary-general of the working committee and director of the Communist Party's publicity department at the Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University.

As a result, the committee quickly set up teams of around 100 people skilled in popularizing medical knowledge in order to crack down on rumors and explain complicated science in an easily digestible manner. They can describe the most complex and obscure facts about the virus in the simplest ways, she added.

"We don't even know how to wear a mask, and which kind of mask can protect against the virus?," a mother of two said. "We don't know which is the right way to wash our hands. How do we keep safe if we need to go shopping at the supermarket? Should we spray alcohol all over our bodies when we get home? What measures should we take to not bring the virus home?"

"Modern medicine is a science, and not everyone has a high enough scientific literacy to understand complex topics," Wang Yu, a professor at Beijing's Communication University of China, told Yicai Global. "Epidemic, virus, infection... many people can't digest these concepts when they are jumbled together and events happen so rapidly.

"Ambiguity, misunderstandings and even rumors can easily emerge, impacting social stability," Wang added. "The committee supplies scientific, openly available and popular epidemic-related information through public and social media in an organized way. This ensures an efficient distribution of much needed information to the public."

Digital Tools

The committee also provides online training to community-level medical staff and institutions to improve their shaky knowledge of epidemic prevention and control. Together with more than 10 other platforms such as the China Association for Science and Technology, the committee has generated 25 e-training videos that have been viewed 87.5 million times.

It has also released 8,126 short videos about fighting the epidemic on the frontline, dispelling rumors and implementing epidemic prevention and control measures. These have helped to guide the public's behavior toward different information being spread on the internet and have played a positive role in calming the public mood.

It produced a series of public welfare posters and videos featuring more than 300 celebrities entitled Paying Tribute to Heroes in Harm's Way. These were played on large advertising screens in millions of locations across China, including 235 remote rural areas.

In the early days of the epidemic, the committee provided a platform for community-level medical institutions without a public voice to call for much-needed supplies. It was able to encourage people to hold charity events both in China and abroad to raise N95 masks, protective clothing and other medical supplies.

Fake News

The outbreak of Covid-19 was swiftly followed by an "information epidemic." Tedros Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization's director-general, even co-wrote an article calling for the end of the information epidemic because conspiracy theories and other deviations from the truth were impeding efforts to contain the contagion, spreading panic and chaos, widening divisions and endangering human lives.

When false information such as the risk of transmitting the virus through aerosol sprays was published, there was a general mood swing among the public. It stabilized once the inaccuracy was corrected.

As of March 30, the committee had published 530 articles clarifying fake news which have clocked up 690 million views. Every day, the committee's rumor-busting team and science popularization team have published keywords to quickly squeeze out hoaxes and ensure the correct information about health care and epidemic control are available in cyberspace, Shi said.

The committee's Rumor Busting platform and tech giant Tencent Holdings' Fact Check platform formed a powerful joint fake news control hub. They were able to detect and suppress rumors being spread on the internet very quickly.

As the situation improves, the 42,600 medical staff sent to the epidemic epicenter of Hubei province have been gradually returning home since March 17. However, the spread of the epidemic globally is worrying, Liu said. We will strengthen international cooperation, share China's experience and use new media platforms to spread knowledge about using scientific methods to fight the epidemic, he added.

Editors: Chen Juan, Kim Taylor

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Keywords:   Covid-19,fake news