Communication in the Time of Uncertainty and Misinformation

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic presents many challenges for public communication, including widespread misinformation and political polarisation of SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 vaccine. However, public communication has played a vital role in addressing the challenges (Mani et al., In press; Paek & Hove, 2021; Torres et al., 2021). Since the health emergency was declared, fake news, conspiracy theories and misleading information have been broadly circulated. In the current digital environment, misinformation spreads quickly and widely at unprecedented levels. COVID-19 misinformation has caused mistrust in governmental and health authorities, resulting in undesirable health outcomes such as rejection of preventive measures and vaccine hesitancy. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations (UN) have declared the widespread dissemination of COVID-19 misinformation an ‘infodemic’. This is not a new phenomenon; Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation about health, risk, science and environmental issues persisted in mediated and interpersonal communication channels. The current special issue provides insights into the phenomenon of misinformation based on evidence from around the world and discusses potential communication strategies to reduce the spread of misinformation and to combat its effects. The first article, titled ‘COVID-19: Examining the Roles of Traditional and Social Media Attention in the Amplification of Risk’ by Kinnally, examines attention to media channels as a source of COVID-19 news and perceived risk of COVID-19 in the United States. Using a nationally representative sample, the study finds that attention to traditional news media was positively associated with perceived risk, while attention to social media as a news source was not associated with risk perception. The study demonstrates that the relationship between attention to social media for COVID-19 information and perceived risk was contingent on one’s political party affiliation, which presents implications regarding political polarisation of COVID-19 information and social media misinformation. Potential communication research avenues around misinformation are offered in the article titled ‘Bibliometric