Interagency Coordination for Infodemic Management during the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: Misinformation, Political Polarization and Health Behaviors

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused massive social disruptions well beyond the element of public health. Ensuing unrest has been further exacerbated by a parallel epidemic referred to as infodemic. Defined as the production of an (over)abundance of (mis)information, the infodemic is fuelled by peer-to-peer dissemination of inaccurate or unverified information on social media. Research in the field of infodemic typically focusses on the production of disinformation by rogue actors, or its dissemination within online communities and in the media. Conversely, this paper analyses the role of authoritative information providers in the online management of infodemic. The Covid-19 information ecosystem is a complex network of actors at the centre of which lies public health agencies, producing a wealth of information, including health recommendations and advice that can be technically complex, politically biased, inconsistent over time, or lack alignment between actors. This may result in increased confusion and distrust among the public, which can undermine an effective public health response. Based on the proposition that greater coordination between public health agencies contributes to manage infodemic situations, this paper examines: what determines the scale of multi-level interagency coordination during a transboundary crisis? This paper adopts a big data approach to analyse whether and to what extent public health agencies in the European multilevel governance coordinate on Twitter. By examining discourse convergence and network structures, we seek to determine whether (1) the phase of the crisis or (2) the level of pre-existing relationships better explain variation in interagency coordination during the pandemic. This paper stands to offer important theoretical insights and practical implications to the challenges of information governance in transboundary crisis management.

Author

• Marie-Eve Bélanger, University of Geneva