Covid-19 Infodemic: WHO Communications
The emergence of COVID-19 brought another epidemic to the forefront: the infodemic, meaning too much false or misleading information in digital and physical environments which caused confusion, as well as risk-taking behaviours that can harm health.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has been working on infodemic management with the aim to enable good health practices through 4 types of activities:
- Listening to communities
- Engaging and empowering communities to take action
- Promoting understanding of risk and health expert advice
- Building resilience to misinformation
Clarion I was enlisted by WHO’s Information Network for Epidemics team (EPI-WIN) and given the task to maximise their communications strategy, as well as community engagement efforts. This included website review, user experience analysis and rewriting of content; brainstorming meetings on creative ways to engage different communities; reassessment and re-structuring of communications plans; delivery of social media training to the team, mapping of social media influencers in the global health space, and the creation of the Infodemic Management LinkedIn page.
More about EPI-WIN’s work can be found here:
WHO/ Sam Bradd